As a small business, it is recommended that your advertising budget be 5% of your gross sales. The challenge for most small businesses is using these limited resources successfully. Small businesses can realize a return on their advertising investment by following a few simple rules. Here are the keys to successfully advertise your small business. Continue reading »
Social media directly influences how we make purchases, according to research conducted by Universal McCann, a global media planning company. In their report, “When did we start trusting strangers?” the company interviewed 17,000 people in 29 countries to see how social media impacts their buying decisions. The leader of the report, Tom Smith stated “This has huge impacts on the way that advertisers and brands have to think about social media – moving involvement from a ‘nice to have’ to an ‘essential to have.’”
Here are some of the stats from the report:
• The top channels for informing people about products and services were Instant Messenger and email, at 44.5 percent and 42 percent respectively.
• Over 29 percent of those polled have commented on a product or brand on a blog
• About 27 percent have posted an opinion about a product or brand on a social networking profile
• People gave their opinions about entertainment most often, with 60 percent having recommended a film and 52 percent recommending music
• Technology was also a big topic to blog about: 57 percent have recommended home technology and 54 percent have recommended some kind of portable technology or mobile phone service on a social media channel
This report shows that everyone that uses social media is an influencer to a certain degree. Of course, some more than others. Many blogs are dedicated purely to reviewing certain products. And, how many times have you recommended a book on Amazon.com or have written a bad review of a Web site that you didn’t get good service from? I know I’ve done both and I don’t consider myself a social marketing guru. That’s the point of social marketing – you don’t have to be a guru, you just have to have your own opinions. And other people will trust your opinion on social media sites.
Universal McCann is using this report to give their clients the following advice:
1. You must participate in social media. If you don’t have a social media presence, you’re toast. (I’m paraphrasing here, of course 
.) Basically, it’s no longer a choice because people are going to be talking about you anyway, so you might as well be proactive and join the discussions.
2. Be transparent. You must be honest and open about how your company works. If you made a mistake, own up to it and control the discussion. If you just ignore it you won’t be able to do any damage control.
3. Invest in your product. People review a product because they had a good experience with it. With the market now being driven by consumer recommendations, the good, responsive companies that have an online social media presence will stand out.
If you don’t get involved in social media, you can’t influence anyone. Traditional advertising and marketing alone won’t do it; people don’t trust companies, but they do trust strangers.
Despite the rough economy, digital marketing is still going strong and is actually growing. According to eMarketer data released in August 2008, advertisers will spend $25 billion online in 2008 in the United States alone. This is about 17.5 percent more than 2007. eMarketer projects that the recession will cause growth to slow a bit in 2009, with projected spending at “only” $28.5 billion.
eMarketer is expecting the economy to recover by 2011 coupled with an increase in online video advertising to push the online ad spending to more than $40 billion that year. They then expect online advertising to grow by about $10 billion each year after that to 2013. eMarketer gets its projections by benchmarking against the Interactive Advertising Bureau numbers.
Digital marketing doesn’t only include online advertising – it includes everything from online video ads to search media to in-game and mobile advertising. A report from analyst firm Parks Associates also forecasts growth in digital media advertising segments. Parks Associates gives a breakdown of everything from Internet display, rich media, search, DVR, mobile and in-game advertising. New categories, such as in-game ads and mobile ads will have the highest gains because they’re starting from lower bases than other forms of digital advertising like online ads.
Parks Associates projects digital media to compose 10 percent of overall ad spending or about $24 billion by 2010. eMarketer predicts a higher number for 2010 of about $33 billion.
Of course, these are all just predictions, and each research firm has its own numbers that tell a different story.
JupiterResearch, for instance, forecasts display ad spending to reach $7.2 billion by 2010, while Parks Associates forecasts display ad spending to reach only $2.4 billion.
JupiterResearch believes by 2010 search marketing will reach $7.5 billion in revenues. Parks Associates sees search marketing growing more than that – up to $9.7 billion.
New categories like rich media, in-game and mobile advertising shows the most growth according to Parks Associates. Internet rich-media ads are projected to bring in an estimated $5.7 billion by 2010. In-game ads will grow at least 50 percent according to the study, bringing in about $430 million annually. Mobile advertising is expected to grow to $2 billion in the same time period.
Even though all the numbers are different, quite different, actually, they are all projecting an upward trend for digital marketing. The Parks Associates report says that media is moving from mass to niche, forcing advertisers to adapt to new content and ad formats. “We believe that advertising over the next five years will go through some changes,” said Parks Associates Research Analyst Harry Wang in a Webcast presentation of the report. “For content providers as well as media publishers, they have to provide content in a form that the audience prefers.”
First, email was too much. Too much info, too much time. Then we used MySpace and Facebook to keep in touch with our social networks. Now, even those have gotten to be too much. Who has time to create personal, long blogs to let her social circle know what’s going on? IM-ing is too time-consuming because you have to interact with everyone individually. Entering stage right: Microblogging!
Microblogging is like IM, but instead of messaging just one person, you message everyone in your social network at one time. Twitter and Plurk are two popular microblogging sites, in case you think you’ve never heard of microblogging. You’ve probably heard of one of these sites, right?
Microblogging is a way to let your friends know what you’re doing at all times. It’s kind of like the “status” feature on MySpace. Using Twitter, for instance, allows you to let everyone in your social network know what you are up to in that precise moment. Right now, in my Twitter profile I’ve got “Working on a blog, laundry is going, dog is snoring under my chair.” Fascinating, I’m sure. But, isn’t “What are you doing?” the first thing we ask when we call up a friend? And the answer we give is basically what goes into Twitter and other personal microblogging sites. But more and more microblogging sites are cropping up that are getting more business than personal.
Yammer is a site that answers the question “What are you working on?” for those in the corporate world. The nice thing is that you can screen those outside of your company so that only your co-workers know what you’re working on. So why would Yammer and other microblogging sites be useful to the corporate world?
People are starting to ignore their email. People’s inboxes are filling up at a much faster rate nowadays, so much so that many emails are ignored for days at a time. With microblogging, you often don’t have enough room to be longwinded, so you can let people know what you’re doing in a sentence or two. If you’re working on a project with a boss that likes to call every half hour to get an update, you can just microblog your status. This also helps to deflect any annoying “check-in” phone calls that turn into “By the way, can you also do this or add this?”
It’s easier to store info. Many companies trap their knowledge in PowerPoints or in one top dog’s email that gets deleted after said top dog leaves the company. Companies are starting to upload content onto company Wikis, which can then be linked to and indexed by conversational microblogs. Now it’s getting useful, and we can’t have that! Something that was intended for fun being business-oriented!? The horror!
Managers can see who their “connectors” are. The connectors are the people who control the flow of info through the department or company. If the managers see that there are only one or two people that are distributing info, they can add other connectors, or narrow down who is diluting or screwing up company messages.
Word-of-mouth marketing can sometimes be better at promoting your company than traditional marketing outlets. Established brands that have loyal fans can create an online presence without actually doing anything company-wise. It’s almost like people paying to wear clothes with a Nike swoosh except people are promoting their fave companies for free on the Internet.
One good example is Empire Today, that’s right, the carpet selling company. Empire Today is actually part of AdAge’s Top 200 Brands list and is becoming known all over the U.S. Empire Today started in Chicago as Empire Carpet and built their brand around an Empire Carpet Guy character and a television jingle that includes their phone number and their name: “800-588-2300 Empire!”
Empire Today’s commercial has been features in the Wayne’s World movies, Ellen DeGeneres’s talk show and Conan O’Brien’s late night talk show. Now fans have uploaded videos paying homage to Empire Today on YouTube. These fans aren’t giving testimonials; they’re just enjoying Empire Today’s jingle and product. The popular YouTube spots featuring Empire Today include one with a little kid dancing to the jingle and another with a dog barking when the jingle plays.
People have even taken pictures of the Empire Today bubblehead dolls that the company gives away as promotional items and posted them on Flickr! That’s something that money can’t buy!
Social media marketing is taking young audiences by storm. Mortgage blogger Brian Brady said about the web: “By using these online tools to connect and generate social capital, we’re leaving little bread crumbs all over the internet that show our passion and knowledge.” All the forms of social media add up to a higher search engine rating, which makes it seem like your brand and your company is everywhere. When people search for your industry or your type of company and you’re name comes up multiple times in the search engine list that builds your credibility. People want to work with businesses that are popular and Google can help make you popular.
So how can you move your customers to do the same for you that Empire Today has done?
Keep doing basic branding activities. Create a logo, slogan and consistent message. Put your phone number, Web site address and company mascot in all of your offline ads. You need to build a consistent look and feel that will be recognized on the Web.
Give out free stuff. Make a connection with customers in your area by contributing to the community and by giving out free stuff. Everyone likes free stuff and free stuff makes people want to tell others what they got. It’s almost like a pride thing “Na na! I got something and you didn’t!” Be sure you give away cool stuff that people will either want to take pictures of and post or that they’ll want to take videos of themselves using.
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