I’ve recently “moved houses” as our British friends say. In doing so, I’ve touched every piece of stuff that I own and have come to the conclusion that there is too much of it. The other realization that crystallized during this process is that some of the stuff should have been ditched long ago. Some items that I’d been keeping for sentimental reasons no longer have value, or function as they should, so they have been purged or donated to others who can use them.

It occurs to me that it’s the same with a company’s marketing, public relations and advertising. Every so often, we need to evaluate  to determine if the things we’ve kept have any use, purpose or even if they are functioning for our firm.

5 Steps to Stay Current

So here are my recommendations:

1. Annually review your advertising placements and determine which ones have actually served your firm. For example, are you still using the printed Yellow Pages? If so, determine how many new customers you received from this expense.
2. Annually review your website for functionality. Digital technology changes so fast and so often that a website designed and coded 3 years ago may now be out of date functionally.
3. Monthly (or weekly) review your website for updated content. Search engines regularly scan websites and index fresh content. As a matter of fact, they have a preference for fresh content. Blogging, project photos, recent honors and awards, client testimonials and reviews are all ways to add freshness to your site.
4. Every 5 years review your branding. Your branding should be something that will be relevant for many years so while you may not need rebranding it may need freshening up. In the last few years, brands such as Wal-Mart and ATT have revised their identities and messaging to be more contemporary. Your firm should do the same.
5. Annually review your financial allocations for marketing, public relations and promotions. If the competitive space in which your company performs is crowded, you may need to step up your game in order to stand out. You might do this by adding new activities, placements, or marketing personnel. You may not need to add anything to your budget; you may just need to shift your priorities. But, you won’t know until you evaluate.

Be proactive for better results

If you undertake these five items, you can be sure you won’t be in the position that I was when I moved and can be assured that your marketing communications will be more current.

photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons image from ARTS

“The result is that digital, which will be about 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009, is likely to grow to about 21% in five years. Along the way overall advertising budgets won’t grow much.”

Coupled with the news that companies who interact heavily in the social media channels have a stronger financial performance, this means that digital must figure in your company’s communications plans.

“Companies that scored well in the study generally have dedicated teams, however small, active in the social media channels they utilize. The study found that the most successful teams evangelize social media across the entire organization to pull in a broad range of stakeholders. These companies view social media as an indispensable tool to help them achieve results, and their approach is conversational.”

It is no longer a question of are these valuable channels for communication but just how your company must be using them.

Photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons digital flower by A.Alhajey

A new survey today shows the rapid acceleration to the Internet as a source of information.

Consumers, just like me, are turning to search engines 82% of the time to find information about local businesses. However, only 44% of small businesses have a website. That leaves a gulf of unmet need.

Many times I have turned to the ‘Net to find a vendor, such as the critter remover I used last year to cause a squirrel family to decamp from my attic. The reason I used the company I did was that they were the only ones who had a website that was credible and then were responsive to my inquiry via e-mail.

Many a small business person believes wrongly that they cannot profit from a well designed solid information site. They think that the Internet is for big businesses. Clearly, that belief is one that is no longer valid.

Of the 44% of small businesses who have a web presence, not all of their sites are searchable or optimized. Consumers are often frustrated in their search for local businesses on the internet.

There are many web developers and designers who are local and capable of building a solid, optimized site using readily available Open Source solutions such as WordPress customized for the business. This allows the business owner to keep their site updated, fresh and alive, to quickly manage content and to send out their current specials and promotions to their site’s subscribers.

When you as a small business owner begin to evaluate where to place your dear advertising dollars, take into account the statistics below.

Usage of Yellow Page print directories, newspapers, and magazines are declining just as are radio and direct mail. The time is now for small businesses to find their place on the Internet beginning with their own website, and digital advertising such as local internet search portals.

Websites with too many ads cause one in two site visitors to leave the site says a study from Burst Media. In a survey of just over 4,000 adults, women showed less tolerance and were quicker to abandon sites than men and those over 55 years of age had the least tolerance for cluttered sites.

Another key finding of this survey is that advertisers whose ads are placed on ad cluttered sites risk their reputation.

It’s interesting to note that college age females and 65+ females have about the same rate of site abandonment. Except for the 45-54 age category, women have less tolerance for clutter. Maybe that’s true of all parts of life; women hate clutter.

Joking aside, the take away is that when your company wants to advertise in the digital world, it is important to check for limited ad placements and quality editorial content. To risk your brand’s reputation on poor placement is risking too much.

Restaurant owners Claude and Uli Melchiorri own and run a successful bistro in Hilton Head, their hometown for the last twenty years. As small business owners, their marketing is very important to their business’ growth. It’s important that their advertising be affordable and trackable. For many small businesses advertising options preferred by large businesses are often not within easy reach. The Melchiorris have found that online advertising is affordable and current. Hilton Head’s Santa Fe Café owner Marshall Sampson confirms what the Melchiorris know, “Interactive search on the internet is what our customers use to find us.” “We can reach more people and be more expressive,” says Uli.”

The backbone of small business advertising used to be print Yellow Pages and newspaper ad placements. According to a March 2008 report from Bloomberg News Service, “U.S. newspapers suffered their worst drop in print advertising sales since industry record-keeping began 57 years ago, hammered by the housing-market slump and competition from the Internet.” While newspapers’ print circulations are down, forty-one percent of all website visits in the third quarter of 2008 were to newspapers’ websites; an increase of sixteen percent over 2007; clearly demonstrating that viewers are using digital news sources on Internet. And these Internet readers want localized news. According to John Kimball, The Newspaper Association of America’s chief marketing officer, “make sure you’re doing well in local news coverage.”

Some of the largest gains in ad placement spending have been in the category of online directory portals, such as the new Hilton Head located U.S. start-up YellowMarketing.com. Evidence for this move to the ‘Net is found in a recent report from The Kelsey Group which states that interactive global advertising revenues will reach $147 billion by 2012 and represent 21% of global ad spending. “It’s no surprise that the global advertising industry is experiencing a full-scale shift to mixed-media platforms, with interactive driving a significant share of overall industry growth,” said Matt Booth, senior vice president, Interactive Local Media, The Kelsey Group. During the forecast period (2007-2012), the United States will see interactive advertising revenues grow from US $22.5 billion to US $62.4 billion, 22.6 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) revenue will grow from $3.7 billion to $9.2 billion (20.1 %) (Kelsey Group).

What the Melchiorris and Sampson know first hand is confirmed by a survey of executive marketing officers. Online/mobile marketing is not only cost-effective, but instantly changeable, viral, current, and measurable (who is looking, who is forwarding, who is clicking through). Advertisers want more metrics and tracking of their ads. They also find that the lower cost of online advertising is easier to bear than the annual cost of thousands of other advertising vehicles.

Not only are traditional print Yellow Page ads expensive, they provide the customer little brand interaction. Print directory publishers have traditionally viewed their online directories as an adjunct to their publications, not as the primary vehicle. With this world view, the market is open for the development of a designed-from-the-ground-up-portal that is local; built for online, not vice versa.

YellowMarketing.com offers advertisers the opportunity to post videos about their businesses that are relevant to their potential customers. According to Michael Boland of The Kelsey Group, “That’s where the beauty of the local video comes in. Like a lot of other broad internet trends (social media, mobile search, etc.) video has made its way to local in its own little way. In other words it’s become an attractive way for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) to start advertising.” ClickZ writer Andreas Roell noted, “Advertising on dedicated, specialized sites allows advertisers to fine-tune their messaging and offer users a message that will resonate. Users who are visiting these niche online destinations are also likely to be further down your purchasing funnel, so why not fish where the fish are?” Boland makes the point, “But unlike the national video ad formats … that require inserting ads with content, local video advertising is the content. In other words, an SMB video lives and breathes on the … IYP listing, City guide profile, or search results. There it serves a user-centric purpose of assisting buying decisions and giving color (literally) to a listing, where a user has intent to find something locally.”

At a recent gathering of local business owners, the advantages of using online video advertising in a local directory portal were clear. Jack Ryan of Lowcountry Mosquito Control Systems, Inc. said “my videos on YellowMarketing allow me to explain my products and my service in a way that customers can understand” and Mike DeSimone of Elite Pools and Spas/Property Preservation Inc. offered, “videos let us show the customer what we can do for them.” Sampson observed, “You can update when you need to and not wait a year until a reprinting” and Ryan continued, “I can update at any time with new ads, videos and promotions.” Others added that their listings have maps and still photos too.

YellowMarketing.com was established in 2007. The company plans to grow nationally through other partnering arrangements with local publishers, phone companies, and radio and television stations in medium to small markets. Peter Buonaiuto, co-founder of YellowMarketing.com, knows the company’s service provides a web based, multimedia experience traditional print and internet yellow pages cannot offer. Because they’ve purchased a business listing database for their marketing area, local businesses are already listed in the directory, free of charge. Buonaiuto says, “For less than half of what businesses will pay for a print and online Yellow Page listing, they can expand their ‘profile’ to include photographs, product information, a video, a link to their website and coupons, all of which are updateable at any time.”

Dennis Geraghty, co-founder, Vice President of Operations and COO says, “Business owners with a YellowMarketing listing enjoy the added benefit of getting indexed in Google, Yahoo and other major search engines as well. These benefits offer the opportunity to drive more traffic to their businesses.” He adds, “We even have plans in the works to optimize the site for Smartphone technology, allowing searchers to navigate from their current location directly to the location they are searching.” Buonaiuto continues, “One of the most desirable features of YellowMarketing is the ability for the business owner to track activity on their profile: to see who is viewing it and what they are looking at.”

Buonaiuto and Geraghty are veterans of the telecom industry. They co-founded Send2Fax, LLC an internet fax services company in 2001. Send2Fax grew profitably to serve tens of thousands of customers around the world until 2006 when the company’s customer base and other selected assets were acquired in 2006 by the leader in Internet fax services.

Prior to the founding of Send2Fax, both had senior level executive careers directing telecom companies with revenues from $100-300 million. They both have been involved directly with a variety of technologies that we now take for granted including pre-paid long distance phone cards and fiber optic networks. In each case, their leadership helped establish these technologies as a way of life.

With their golden background and insight into the telecom business, their “voices of experience” and insight into small business marketing, it’s clear that they know where they are going with YellowMarketing.com and their advertisers agree with them.

DeSimone sums it up when he says, “YellowMarketing is very cost effective compared to most advertising I’ve tried in the past. I really feel that I am getting a great return on my investment with YellowMarketing.”

The ad links to a holiday shopping page for gifts under $50 at MySimon. (I’ve added the link here so that you too, can “see more.”)

Kudos to the folks at CNET. They know what their readers are interested in, iPhones, women, and good showers–of course that is just one segment.

Smart retailers both online and bricks and mortar will be segmenting more and more and will be furiously trying to get us to do our holiday and Christmas shopping earlier, in greater volume, and like MySimon, they understand, for greater values.

Digital ad placement is not just online, but some of the most direct and targeted ads can be included to segments in e-newsletters. Bingo, ads to a permission, targeted group.

If I were managing the roll out, I would not have blatantly announced I was “using social networking” to a bunch of Ad Bloggers. I would have used guerrilla marketing/micro advertising that treated the new logo as an obliteration of the old logo. In a year when “Change” is used as a slogan so much in politics, it is devastatingly clear how only one politician (Obama) has been able to actually appropriate it and manage it properly. He didn’t tell people they were going to start a social networking of barackobama.com, they just introduced and did it.

Furthermore, the Obama logo was perfect for destroying the stupid flag-and-name paradigm of political advertising. Shephard Farey’s propaganda posters (which I find very disturbing) also were daring enough to transform the campaign into a movement.

That’s what Pepsi should have done. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” except you are slowly infiltrating and upgrading your own brand. That’s what the Internet means today. It gives people the power to erode institutions through a multitude of voices– that’s how the Netroots beat the Clintons. In a wargame the US staged to prepare for a naval battle with Iran, a commander representing Iran chose to load all of Iran’s commercial, private, and military boats with dynamite and swarm the slow American dreadnaughts. He annihilated the US Navy in the simulation, so the Pentagon reset the war game and told him he couldn’t do that. That’s the power of small things versus large institutions.

Advertisers need to realize that social networking isn’t television. I don’t think they have. They still use it like a message-disseminating tool, not a message-shaping one. It’s not a megaphone. This generation distributes its own news, cuts up techno songs and puts rap lyrics over them, and designs its own t-shirts. User-generated content is the norm. I buy stuff, but I’m even more inclined to buy it if I think it was my idea.

And another thing kids hate: when big companies try to look cool by doing what the kids do, and making it obvious they are doing what the kids do. Like this campaign.

I do see that they are “inviting people to participate,” but coming from a corporation, that just sounds hollow. Especially because they already did a re-design and are stating this is “part of the new direction.”

So Pepsi should have made it appear like something new and better was taking over the brand instead of just saying, “This is what the new logo is now, look, it’s so effing cool because it’s not like those old logos it’s new and looks like an iPod and you guys like iPods, right? Because it looks like one and we’re using social networking to roll it out and you guys like that too, right?” See, Coke does redesigns, but I think it’s more comfortable with its status as “Classic.” This seems like the effort to get Generation After NeXt. Generation NeXt was a great campaign for the late 90s, by the way.

So what would the campaign look like? Probably the new logo everywhere, on subways, billboards, next to the old logo in stores, culminating with a You Tube of a solar eclipse. Then the blacked out sun becomes the new logo. Who knows if that would work. But I do think they missed the nuance of social networking and its importance to this generation.

The new dynamo movie, The Women, uses product placements like there will never be another opportunity for any other type of advertising. For example, when Meg Ryan’s character washes her face, there’s the Dove product. The first product placement was not a visual of a product, but an audio tagline used for product placement. The T-Mobile signature audio tag (ting aling aling)

was heard as Meg Ryan answered her phone in the garden and continued to be heard throughout the movie when the character received a phone call.

But it’s not just the movies where we are seeing increasing use of branded content and product placements. My favorite TV show, Mad Men, has introduced a new type of placement; a factoid appears in the signature Mad Men titling style leading into the (Heineken or Target or Chemistry.com) spot.

Product placement is carried to its most extreme with the Degree antiperspirant placement in Eureka, the sci-fi series about a genius town where geek inventors work in top secret developing new military technology. The new tech stuff is quickly (this season) turned into product (placement?). The latest placement is more like a marriage–they expect us to believe that Degree is a part of these fictitious folks lives?

I’m dubious about the success of the Degree placement. To me it’s not nearly as successful as the old Jack Benny show placement of Carnation Evaporated Canned Milk. One thing is sure I guess there really are no new ideas. We recycle old ones with newer technology–witness the demise of the back fence and the rise of social media.

What’s your take on the increasing use of branded content? Share your thoughts and tell us where you’ve seen branded content.

People wonder what we do in advertising; and here from the mouths of babes is a great description of exactly what each person in the agency does, except…they left out traffic…but that person is probably too busy and nobody every notices them, uh, right?

Hey, can’t I laugh at my own profession? I do love it!