How We Work : Blog

The statistics on social networks are fascinating: My Space alone drives 2% of traffic to shopping and classified sites. Financial, travel and communication sites are all seeing traffic growth from social networking sites. The research shows that social networkers are more likely to rely on peer reviews and word of mouth than on the latest ad campaign and they spend 25% of their income online (vs 17% for non networkers).

For marketers, traditional online advertising within social networks has proven to be wanting. Integrated strategies through branded micro-sites, peer reviews and forums are the tools showing results.

Marketers are slowly but surely are moving into niche marketing, within the suburbs of the social networks. While this sounds good, (especially in Asia) marketers will need to grapple with a plethora of issues both within their organizations and the new consumers they market to. Within the organization, they will have to deal with possibly conflicting marketing initiatives, logistics issues and stakeholders who want to see more immediate results (For the corporate cat: a print ad in a leading paper is probably easier to comprehend than your product persona’s having 8,000 friends on My Space). With consumers, marketers will need to be prepared take feedback head-on and work out how to work with and reward buzz generators while helping them maintain their credibility.

It is going to be exciting to see how marketers navigate this new space. I’m expecting new technology and measurement tools to emerge that will help marketers justify and execute their strategies in this area.

Have a great weekend ahead!

Joanne

 

Technorati Tags: myspace, social network marketing, online marketing, niche marketing
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I was hearing out Rachel’s business plan, running through the business goals and objectives. In essence, she was seeking to create an online community where people could swap and meet items with other community members in their area. Anything from collectibles, used clothes, old toys and what not, such an online community service could be eagerly in demand she said.

After nailing down some concepts, we started to go into more specific details.
The first logical step to building the community is to build the website in which most of these activities would gain a ramp up from. As the website is not meant to be the online front of a brick and mortar shop, Rachel did not have any organization name at hand to be used as part of the domain name for the new website. She did have one idea for an easy to remember and meaningful name though:

“How about Goods Exchange? People can register in 3 simple steps and be on their way to exchanging goods with fellow community members!” she chirped enthusiastically. Amid my fits of laughter and her puzzled look at my reaction, I managed to pen down her desired website domain name on the notepad in front of us.


It took a while for her to get it and needless to say, she was understandably embarrassed but amused at the same time. In case you still do not get it, this domain name can easily be misread as GoodSexChange.com….

Choosing the right domain name can be critical to the success of your website. Your domain name is the only way visitors can find you on the Internet. Obviously you really need to spend more time coming up with the good domain name for your website.
Rather than reinventing the wheel, here are a couple of links which might help you along:

• Link 1
  
• Link 2
• Link 3
  

For those interested, Rachel didn’t use that domain name eventually. This might have or not been a good thing though. Sometimes a domain name such as the one mentioned above could garner the attention of the Internet community if only because it has viral marketing potential (think spreading of the domain name through friends and colleagues due to the humorous nature of the domain name in comparison to the actual services provided by the website). So that may have been what the following web enterprises had on their minds when they came up with the domain names for their sites……or not.

• A power generator company in Italy:  www.powergenitalia.com
• Searching for a qualified therapist? Try here: www.therapistfinder.com
• One of the best online knowledge communities of IT experts over at www.expertsexchange.com
• The community website for First Cumming Methodist Church: www.cummingfirst.com
• A website to search for agent representatives for Hollywood celebrities: www.whorepresents.com

Anyways, if you are genuinely interested in undergoing a sex change, here are some links you might find useful:

www.comicsexchange.com
www.veteransexchange.com
www.musiciansexchange.com
www.actorsexchange.com
www.exoticsexchange.com
www.graphicsexchange.com
www.homesexchange.com
www.kidsexchange.com
www.momsexchange.com
www.playersexchange.com
www.womensexchange.com
www.studentsexchange.com

I could go on and on...but I'll leave you to do the exploring.


Arthur

Technorati Tags: choosing, domain, url, name, domain name, website, company, internet

earth9 is going to have its very own podcast soon. We are probably going to start small, maybe a couple of minutes to just have a quickfire roundtable about the latest buzz in the online marketing sphere.  

I'm going to try to blog about all the nasty and interesting bits so that if you ever want to try doing your own corporate podcast, at least you will have my experience to have a look at.

I'm probably going to leave out the technical details on how to actually create a podcast, there are tons of resources out there already and focus on the marketing and tension that exists in such a new medium.

It seems that nowadays a lot of companies both large and small are keen to get on the buzzword bandwagon. Having a podcast or a vidcast on your corporate site is seen as being "cool" and in touch with today's consumers.

The problem is trying to create something interesting and useful for listeners while not giving your company PR department a heart attack. Invariably, most corporate podcasts turn out "safe" and boring and are no more than commercials using another medium.

Step #1
Getting management to agree that the customer is the top priority.

e9's podcast will focus on services, technologies and ideas that we feel will interest businesses thinking of exploring or improving on thier marketing mix. If we step on a few toes so be it. As long as our listeners find value in what we are saying, that's the only ROI we are gunning for right now.

I'll be updating this as we go along, so just check back every now and again.

 

dan

Technorati Tags:podcast, corporate blogging, vidcast, starting your own podcast, start podcasting, hurdles to corporate podcasting

Adidas recently launched a marketing campaign to bring fans closer to New Zealand’s popular All Blacks rugby team by sharing samples of the players’ blood. Showing how creativity can make most of a small marketing budget, minimal bloodshed and 95,000 hits later - no one's complaining this was an anaemic idea.

Jo

Technorati tags:
Adidas, Marketing Campaign Ideas, Online Marketing

Nivea recently expanded into the premium product arena with the launch of its new anti cellulite product, Goodbye Cellulite in Singapore.

What is interesting about this that while it encompasses TVCs, print and outdoor creatives – there was no mention of online. It would seem to me to be a product ripe (no pun intended) for the online medium. Users would appreciate having access to product information, testimonials and perhaps register for a sample or 2. With the end customer invisible to most consumer marketers, the web is a good means to get information about and from them. The messaging of this campaign: centered around friendly, confident girls also makes an online grassroots marketing effort appealing.

A recent campaign by J&J’s Neutrogena, Visibly Pretty, saw more than 1,500 video blogs submitted within a 2 week period. Girls liked sharing and talking about their beauty secrets. The company leveraged a community blogging site, skyblog and used its sister radio station to drive girls to the site. Consumer generated content raised awareness about the brand and also provided the company with an opportunity to interact and learn about their audience.

Especially among women, sharing experiences and word of mouth play a significant part in how we make purchase decisions (Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty springs to mind). Get your audiences and customers involved and they will respond in helping you drive the brand (and the product – check out Brewtopia and Jones Soda). With the persistent popularity of social networks and consumer generated content, it’s a better time then ever to utilize such mechanisms in the marketing mix.

Joanne

It has been busy period for us with a bunch of pitches and new projects. Christmas week is typically a planning period but we are abuzz and on the verge of going into quite a project high.

On the email marketing front, we've been running quite a few campaigns as well as introducing minor new enhancements to our solution. 

Thought I would share a few thoughts here from our own experiences as well as studies we've been following.

1. Segment, Segment, Segment
A recent study by MarketingSherpa said segmentation had a dramatic impact on open and click through rates even for very small lists (lower than 5,000). We've found this true, if you want your messages to be more effective, its well worth the effort to segment and craft customized messages. 

2. HTML Visual Checklist
- dont' use forms or javascripts in your emails
- keep style reference within the body tag
- provide your images with 'alt' references 

3. Catching the right time
Another recent research paper found that for B2B email campaigns, the highest response rates were towards the end of the week and the lowest were mid week.

4. Regular Content Checklist
- link to see the content on the web 
- why the user is receiving your email
- instructions for adding your email address if they want to continue receiving mails from you
- means to unsubscribe

5. Test-Blast Checklist
a) Depending on your audience base, test blast your campaign to
- important web-mail providers such as Google, Yahoo, MSN...Myrealbox
- mail clients such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes (especially if your audience includes government addresses for Singapore), Thunderbird, Eudora Pro
Recently we spent a lot of time validating HTML code for a campaign because the email could not be seen in Lotus Notes, it turns out Notes is really strict about HTML. Check this out as well.
b) On another note, test blasts are also important to seeing if your emails are getting past the spam filters-they help you understand if you are using spam-friendly terms. The funny thing is, due to the large amount of spam I get, my spam filter, is turned to 95%-block - this often means I send out test blasts and have to go find them in my "Possible Junk Mail" box. It's a fun challenge to try and beat your own security systems!

-Food for Thought-
Incorporation of RSS feeds into Yahoo Mail / Google
Google and Yahoo both have have implemented betas of RSS integrated into their web mail products. This will change the way we view and use RSS as a marketing tool...hopefully more on that later.

• Email vs RSS
• Y!mail and RSS
• Gmail Clips

If you are keen to get our help with your email campaigns, let me know!

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Check out the promotion.