Positive vs. Negative Buzz

Consumers tend to find positive information about a product more credible than negative information. A survey performed in August 2010 by Keller Fay Group found that 66% of internet users thought positive brand information was believable as compared to 48% for negative brand information. While a more recent poll showed that negative buzz is gaining more influence on purchasing decisions among internet users, positive buzz is still more likely to affect purchasing decisions.

This finding illustrates the importance of managing brand messages and chatter online. It suggests that as long as a brand or product has significant positive reviews associated with it, then negative reviews will have less of an influence on the purchasing decision.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008614

Service Updates for Google Analytics

Google Analytics had quite a newsworthy day yesterday with the announcement of Real Time services as well as Premium Accounts. I can obviously see the huge benefits of being able to monitor up-to-the-minute data on your website's users; this will be incredibly relevant when running social media campaigns being able to track the waning interest of your tweets/posts. Thinking back on the first class where we briefly discussed attrition rates on email distribution lists, I wonder what the impact of this real-time data will have on the frequency of campaigns that drive users to the website and how that will impact the attrition rate of subscribers to those means of communication. Additionally, for websites that drive sales rather than readership it will be interesting to see how the Real Time data impacts not only the company's ability to tailor campaigns to keep user frequency high, but also to leverage that frequency into increased customer spending.

The article below talks a bit more about this new service, and hints that Analytics may be key to future growth strategies at Google.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_analytics_finally_goes_real_time.php

Branding and the importance of it in a digital world

A very interesting article was written in The New Yorker this week on Lexicon, a company that focuses on creating brand names for clients. The Blackberry was solely created by ideation sessions, and resulted in huge brand equity, at one time being synonymous with smartphones prior to the iPhone revolution. The article provides interesting anecdotes and argues whether names are more or less important in the modern world (our very own Columbia professor Bernd Schmitt is quoted commenting the higher importance of the product itself versus the brand name). However one feels about the importance of brand names, its an interesting article for all of us marketers-noting the importance of multilingual exploration due to our globalized digital world, plus reminding all of us that the ever-increasing overload of product communication to customers necessitates a new way of thinking. Enjoy!
(oh and if you don't want to deal with paying to read the whole thing, I'm happy to send out the article for anyone who wishes to read it in full)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/03/111003fa_fact_colapinto

Berlin: the best place to launch a start-up?

Over the past year, I've been fortunate to travel to Berlin twice and have been moved by the energy and creativity. My first trip, while meeting a mutual-friend - a founding members of Zalando (Germany's answer to Zappos) - for dinner, I also was fortunate to meet another ambitious start-up entrepreneur, Hannes, who was featured today on the WSJ.com pitching his new company, Iversity.

While the US has several major hotbeds for start-up activity (notably Silicon Alley and more recently, NYC) Berlin's inexpensive living costs and creative culture make the city a breeding ground for those who wish to taking chances. And while NY start-ups probably have better access to financing, Berlin offers places like the Betahaus, which offers an environment to incubate an idea while learning from fellow creatives. If you're new to the start-up world, Berlin might be your best chance to launch, given the creative energy and relatively inexpensive office and labor costs.

Want to Know How VC's calculate Valuation different than founders?

I found this blog posting through techcrunch and thought it was really interesting because it runs through a number of different resources that entrepreneurs can use to help guide them in company valuation. I've never heard of most of these sites, and it is exciting to know that they exist. Specifically, the blog post talks about the vastly different manner in which VCs approach valuation, and how a start up can avoid the legal jargon, and diluting their own control of the company with the advent of VC funding.

http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/07/22/want-to-know-how-vcs-calculate-valuation-differently-from-founders/

The Value of Free Internet Comparison Tools

With Australian firm Pixel Capital's purchase of creditcard.net for almost $140k USD, it is clear that the free online tools (to drive traffic, and ultimately, business) is an extremely valuable tool. The company offers a free version of an online financial tool that can be used for tracking purchases and expenses, and monitoring other financial activity in one's everyday life. With the ownership of the credit card.net website, Pixel Capital can now target the traffic that utilizes those free online financial tools with targeted offers and advertisements. Additionally, the company can provide promotions and opportunities for users seeking specific financial services, and pair their offerings with those needed by the users of the free online tools. An excellent idea, and a good strategy as discussed in class, aimed at increasing qualified traffic for the purpose of ultimately driving users that are qualified and perfect candidates for the financial services.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/26/australian-company-buys-creditcard-net-for-138000/

The Phone Has a New Function

If you think that the phone has it all these days—music player, apps, reader, navigator, think again. Google has introduced a new feature to the already multifaceted phone: it can now be used as a wallet.

Google launched a “new” concept, which it calls Google Wallet (although it is apparently a relatively well and widely used concept in Asia and parts of Europe). The idea behind Google Wallet is simple—it is looking to replace your physical wallet and change the way consumer spend by discouraging cash-based transactions. Google Wallet stores the data of your credit card on the mobile phone (or you can transfer from your checking account to the Google Wallet account) in a quest to make transactions easier. They claim this will cut out the time spent fumbling for credit cards, getting discounts on coupons, adding points to your rewards system cards etc. Google Wallet aims to be a one-stop alternative to a wallet—therefore, when you pay at CVS for example, you can use the Wallet to simultaneously pay, add points to your account, and redeem any discounts or offers that could be specifically tailored for you at the time of check-out.

Security of course, is of prime concern with new features such as Google Wallet. It uses a new technology—Near Field Communications software, which claims to be secure and allows activation only through a personalized four-digit code, much like using your ATM pin.

The main problem with this concept is that it is currently very limited in offering—only Sprint’s Google Nexus S phone has the technology. In addition, most businesses are still to adopt the form of payment to process transactions and have not installed the technology widely. Other problems of course are issues around security, especially if the phone is lost or the data is somehow hacked into while a person is actually carrying out a transaction. And on a practical level, you will only have a Wallet until your phone has battery!

While there is a definite future for such a technology with all things progressing towards mobile, security and logistics will remain key concerns that Google will have to continue improving upon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/technology/personaltech/googles-virtual-credit-card-can-replace-plastic.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Financial Advisors benefit from Social Media

As mentioned on my first post, I joined Twitter to follow article of interest relating to the financial industry.  I came across this article on my Twitter feed and find it useful for anyone in SALES and looking to connect on a more personal level with their clients and prospects.

The More Friends the Better
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903461304576524363546220074.html

For anyone in business and most importantly sales, we tend to forgot the core of what makes people buy what we are selling.  At times it has nothing to do with the product or service, nothing to do with how great we are at selling, and nothing to do with pricing.  People buy from people they like.  That's very broad, but to like someone you have to feel that person either shares in the same beliefs you do, have a similar background as you, or feel you have their best interest above any other.  Using social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, allows advisers and salespeople to develop a relationship with their clients therefore ensuring that they remain clients. 

As with any scenario, there exists pros and cons to using social media as a financial professional.  As the article mentions, regulatory supervision is just one, and in my opinion least important, cons associated with social media.  Your words, friends, pictures, and just about anything you post will be available and scrutinized by clients and prospectus. This leaves the salesperson extremely exposed to second guessing and may even propose the clients to sever their relationships.  As I mentioned previously, people like to do business with people they like and can relate to.  How much in common do you have your clients if you have Facebook pictures enjoying summers in the Hamptons, FourSquaring that you are going to dinner at Jean Georges and Twetting how great your new Maseratti is.  Unless your target clients enjoy those things too, this would be negative for the relationship.

In my opinion, Social Media is a great tool to market your skills, products and services but you need to keep in mind that what you allow others to see and read about you will result in others passing judgement.  As a financial advisor, I believe the best use of social media is to gather information not distribute it.  By following your clients and prospects online, you can uncover what time of person they are and use it to relate better to them.  There is an abundance of information about others online and you can gather it to connect with your clients and align your interest with theirs.  By using social media to gather information about your clients and prospects, your relationships with them will get stronger and will be difficult to separate regardless of what product or service you are selling.

Miguel Gonzalez
EMBA 2012
VP - Investments
JP Morgan Chase

Bing and Decide?

This past week it was revealed that Microsoft is trying to determine what the brand positioning for Bing should be.

In June 2009, Microsoft launched a slew of commercials and positioning that positions Microsoft as a "decision engine" not a "search engine". Any consumer knows that any search result yields a lot of information. Google has an enormous footprint on the search market and Bing has a much smaller share. It makes sense that Bing tried to differentiate itself and tried to assist consumers in making purchasing decisions. And, as a consumer, I'd actually have to agree then when searching to make a product purchase I did find Bing to be more helpful that Google.

Clearly the debate over calling Bing a decision engine gives us some insight into the minds of top executives. It sounds like their strategy is not paying off enough in dividends. Maybe they realized how much money is on the table and how they aren't a large enough share. Or maybe the Yahoo! and Bing merger didn't go as smoothly as planned. So now, executives but decide what to do-- keep the old branding or develop new brand positioning. Wouldn't it be nice if they could just "bing and decide"... or maybe google will provide a better answer.

For more on the article: http://adage.com/article/digital/microsoft-s-bing-ax-decision-engine-positioning/230011/

Want a career in Social Media?

This infographic seems the most appropriate for the class. It shows the growth of social media and various the statics of what it takes to be a social strategist. I think if you are in the class, you already believe in the future of social marketing, but I am sure a little assurance doesn't hurt :)

A website worthy of its social media traffic?

After class today I googled my company and saw both title tag and meta tag violations. Incidentally, the meta tag highlights our donation pitch which is great news for me (the chief fundraiser), but bad news for our primary online goal (sell tickets to fabulous plays).

Like so many other small businesses, my organization aspires to create a vibrant/engaging/dynamic/“insert hip buzzword here” online presence. Our resources are primarily targeted towards social media initiatives – which are useful for updating our audience about our plays, behind the scene stories, and performance discounts. The end game of social media, of course, is to drive the traffic to our website so they will purchase a ticket or subscription. With that in mind, it is interesting that we put so much effort into our social media presence, yet neglect to keep our own website as relevant, up-to-date, and searchable as it should be.

The article below speaks to this very topic. Organizations will not reach their online potential without a website that can support (and capitalize from) the social media traffic.

http://www.bnet.com/blog/small-biz-advice/ignore-the-social-media-hype-your-business-will-always-need-a-great-website/4548?tag=fd-river8

More Trouble for Groupon IPO--WSJ

In my job I've worked with Gilt Groupe on event promotions, but I also like to shop there. In fact, between Buywithme, Gilt, Gilt Taste, Ruelala, and countless other online sales groups, I get at least 10 emails a day notifying me of the next sale, the next opportunity to buy.

One place I never buy from is Groupon. It seems that when people talk about an online sales "bubble" Groupon always comes up. I thought it was more about the offerings, but there is a lot more going on--as this article on the IPO and significant managament problems highlights. It seems like quite a leap for the company valuation to include full "booking" costs for experiences...completely ignoring the fact that a significant portion of the proceeds go to partners. That this differential accounting led to a 400 million dollar overstatement of revenues seems crazy, and incredibly misleading. Now it seems that the management side is experiencing problems as well, with the COO leaving after only months in the job---headed back to Google of all places.

Pinkberry’s Secret: Director of Digital is More Important than Director of Brand Advertising or Brand Marketing!

Who would’ve thought that the importance of a digit­­al presence and especially a strong social media triumphs any other traditional marketing channels. According to Pinkberry’s Director of Digital, Pamela Naumes, in her interview with Business Insider, “the company has decided to really look for a director of digital as their focus, and as their way to show that the social space–the digital space–is one which is becoming more and more critically important for brands moving forward.” The company never hired a Director of brand advertising or a director of brand marketing, because they believed that Social media is the most cost-effective method to reach out to and engage with their customers on a daily basis.

It seems that their plan worked. Pinkberry’s frozen yogurt brand has established a great following of customers online. On the Restaurant Social Media Index, RSMI, they earned the 11th spot, which is the highest of any frozen yogurt chain. They are right behind Chipotle and beat Subway and the Cheesecake Factory. RSMI is sponsored by DigitalCoCo and powered by third-party tracking systems such as Klout and Social Insights, and measures the influence of each brand against others each quarter. It is a great tool for restaurants to see where they stand against each other in the social media world. To view the top hundred list go to (www.rsmindex.com/top-100-rsmi). Finally, to view the full interview with Pinkberry’s Director of Digital with Business Insider go to: (http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-pinkberry-director-of-digital-pamela-naumes-2011-9).

Now it is time for me to grab my small chocolate yogurt with chocolate shavings and raspberries from Pinkberry!

Facts to Fiction

I was recently reading the article, The next Big Headache for Digital Publishers” which was based on the integration of Wikipedia articles to Google’s News Entries. If Wikipedia becomes the default, it will become the leading source of information on the web, easily winning precedence over news organizations. Why is this newsworthy? Well, I was thinking about information we are exposed to and what that means to our society, our future. If Wikipedia, a website that aggregates and collects information that everyday people submit (no credentials necessary) becomes our default source of information, what kind of information are we gathering? Sure, they have their own team of ‘fact checkers’ but in taking the role of news leader, and with the immense amount of minute-to-minute information, will they continue to be so thorough? Will we base our thoughts and opinions on oftentimes illegitimate or unconfirmed information? Many people argue we do that now- with blogs. The Huffington Post is one of the most popular sources of information- and sure we know they’re opinions, but does that even matter anymore? Have we shifted from a fact based data sharing center--where news organizations, with trained researchers and journalists, are required to report fairly and without bias—into a-one-for-all era.Will neutral and balanced journalism be a dying profession in the next 50 years or will Wikipedia and blogs realize their power and begin to make room for ‘factual information’? Perhaps they will host a ‘Here are the facts’ section so we are encouraged to form our own opinions as well.

What’s next for Google’s search method is critical in understanding how we, regular people, realize and collect information and what type of information that is. Looking forward to seeing how this pans out…and determining whether Google really can change how we think of the world.

e-commerce - what strategy for health and beauty cosmetics?

Any firm which is strong on its original market has to define a strategy for its international development. The question of this development has to be addressed at two (parallel) levels: the first one is to find the most appropriate local channel of "traditional" distribution in each new country where we want to start, in line with the worldwide strategy. The second challenge is to find the most appropriate digital marketing strategy in these new countries - still in line with the worldwide marketing strategy and with the image of the brands.

My company is selling Cosmetics and Hair-Care products. It was created fifty year ago by a pharmacist in France, and our quote is “from Health to Beauty”. The first market is the 22,000 French pharmacies. These pharmacies are independent, privately owned, the products are sold on the shelves but any sale person is very well educated in order to provide strong advises - there is even a legal obligation to get anytime a pharmacist in the store. No comparison with the big drugstores chains in the US where you can find chips and diet Coke next to prescription drug corner. So we had to address the strong question of our distribution strategy when we decided to launch the business in the US. We decided to sell to the Dispensing (Dermatologists) market and we convinced the headquarter to sell as well to the retail/ mass market through “upscale” and urban drugstores like the new Duane Reade with their Look Boutiques.

Very soon the US team understood the tremendous potential of e-commerce in the US since this market is growing fast and can be very profitable - if the additional margin we take from the traditional retailers more than offsets costs of the B to C distribution. The challenge is to convince the top management in Europe, since there the strategy is to develop the proximity with the pharmacies. The Group try to limit in Europe the sales of our products online arguing the lack of individualized advices to the consumers. So we are in front of two different strategies in two main continents which can hamper each other business.

A good plan for our US affiliate would consist in launching first the e-commerce for our most “mass” hair-care brand, and launch as a second step the more “technical” Cosmetics line. In the meantime the team in Europe will see all the advantages of doing e-commerce.

Local Search - A Growing Opportunity

One of the most efficient forms of online marketing is Paid Search. It generates one of the highest ROIs across digital channels and is an effective tool for both brand awareness and customer acquisition. While paid search can prove to be costly for small business owners, a cheaper option is optimizing their webpages for organic search. However, this space has become more and more saturated and harder to obtain the valuable top real estate.

With all this competition, how can a small business break through the clutter? Some say that optimizing for local search is now the low hanging fruit. A recent article in iMedia Connection depicts this situation in the following excerpt:

"Take a look at a search query for "gift shops San Diego," which shows results for Google Places above the routine 10-pack of web page results (an evolution from a phase when several local results would take up 30 to 40 percent of the 10-pack). Because of the convenience, many searchers click here first. This means that no matter how well organically optimized you are, and even if you're sitting on the top organic search spot, you might receive fewer and fewer visits from searchers who seem to favor local results. That's why it's important for local businesses to be optimized for both local and organic search results."

It will be interesting to see what Google will do to change the landscape of search as mobile search becomes increasingly popular. Perhaps local search may become so large that it will have its own sub-segment similar to Google images. In any case, if you own your small business, don't forget to optimize locally.

For steps on how to optimize your website for local search : http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/30056.asp

Facebook Timeline

There's been a lot of commentary this week about the new developments to the Facebook user experience. The bigger headline, however, is the revenue growth that is expected from media content-- music, movies, tv-- incorporated in the soon-to-be released Facebook Timeline.

Fast Company Magazine explores the issue in an article entitled "New Facebook Timeline Is All About Discovery and Explosive Revenue Growth." In truth, the Timeline is actually pretty cool. Fast Company describes it as "scrapbook-on-steroids" of your life (see link below). What is interesting is Facebook's plan on incorporating social apps and tracking of media tastes.

By partnering with media companies like Spotify and Hulu, the hope is to increase consumption by the Facebook user and shared content beyond just personal photos. Just as you once went to your friend's house to browse CD collections, the hope is you will now soon do this on your friend's Facebook page.

It will be interesting to see how this all pans out. Will Facebook be forced play nice with iTunes or will it develop its own media sourcing? What will this mean for our privacy or is it already gone? It all remains to be seen...

Fast Company Magazine:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1781979/facebook-timeline-profile-page-f8-zuckerberg

A new advertising channel

Traditional advertising methods such as TV, newspapers, yellow pages, magazines and banners are back in past. Nowadays the era of Internet advertising has come and has been spread around the global network at no time.  Each company created its website and started to promote its products there or via global searchers such as Google, Yahoo etc. Now you even can use special sources (e.g. adwords) to post your ad and draw attention of consumers.
  All these channels of information distribution are very efficient and relatively not very expensive, however, companies are still looking for the new channels of promotion. Mobile has become a highly popular source of information. Now consumer carry their smart phones wherever they go and can use them whenever they want. Usually when you are staying in line or waiting for an appointment you can take a smart phone out of your pocket and start look for something on Internet through the cell phone.  However, when we surf and try to figure out locations, restaurants, bars, stores we do not necessarily look for something in particular. Lets say after a meeting I decided to have lunch in a new place, so I went on the Internet through my smart phone and just started randomly choose places. In this case I am likely to go to any place, but all restaurants want to be those 'any places'.
  An advertising mobile channel is going to be launched in order to attract consumers when they are on their smart phones. According to statistics, now people tend to spend their time on the apps more then on their PCs, so may be there is a potential to grow marketing infrastructure through mobile which will be more costless and even more efficient than online ads on PCs. Google has already introduced the way to implement this idea by including an option to drop-down menu for “mobile devices with full Internet browsers.” For using it one has to have an account on AdWords and should follow a regular keyword finding procedure, but will target to mobile users as well. This mechanism is not yet well automated because a company still does not know how much  it should spend regionally. Google can only give a number of ads a company may get for its overall budget, but there is no way to find out how much a keyword costs in a particular region of the country or the globe.
  However, there is a huge potential for the improvement in mobile ad distribution, because a company can catch a consumer when he is on his way, when he is ready for moving and getting to the store, purchasing and consuming. Moreover, frequently it turns out that people are so tightened in time that they simply need to find ANY place that matches their demand, so at this point there is nothing easier than to draw their attention to the store/restaurant/bar.
   Overall, I consider this idea a great opportunity for marketing. A company knows its target audience and can get it when potential customers have a free minute during the day or are going somewhere and have a will to stop by at any point on their way. With mobile ad this is the best time to make them become YOUR customer.

Based on an article http://mashable.com/2011/09/19/mobile-search-advertising/

Online Marketing: a huge market still largely untapped

In the current technological environment, consumers have come to expect an ease of access to information which can be met with digital content; this trend is a growing market that advertising and marketing industries can easily capitalize upon. This shift in technology reliance has forced major MSOs to increase their network capacity and upgrade their infrastructures to accomodate consumer expectations for online streaming of traditional news and media, movies, popular TV shows, and sports events.

In 2010 alone, digital advertising revenues from the major sports leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL) amounted to roughly $1.3 Billion. These online sites include specific sports sites (USTA, PGA, etc), ESPN, and Youtube. Even with these numbers, there still exists a large inventory of unsold ad space reflecting only a partial online adoption and "lack of focus" by content owners and distributors. As the industry continues to evolve and more contet is delivered online, we will see increases in online marketing/advertising revenue across the board. Obviously, this is a market that we should all be taking advantage of!

(source: emarketer.com/article.aspx?R=1008590)

Social Media Sponsorships in the Performing Arts

A recent study done by social media advertising company IZEA shows that blog posts and videos have the highest value for marketers and publishers. As the market for social media continue to grow, it is not surprising to see that marketer are showing more interests social media sponsorship. According to the study, only 23.2% of the marketers have sponsored an online video, but 50.2% said they would use such a social media sponsorship. Moreover, of all the elements such as quality and sentiment of content, cost-per-click, shares, cost per acquisition and more, quality of a post was the most important measure of success: 80% of respondents saying it was very important or important.

In addition to the activities presented above, there is also a monetary value on the different types of social media sponsorships. Blog posts and videos were the mentions with the most value, calculated to be $114.71 and $112.46, respectively.

As a marketer for classical music and performing arts organizations, the message above shows some opportunities for the market I am interested in. Most major orchestras, opera houses, and music festivals do have some type of online presence such as Facebook, twitter, and many organizations have their own Youtube channel. Given the nature of the product, Youtube has been an effective tool for audience to learn more about the orchestras, artists, and the performances in a “less intimidating” setting (new concert goers do find it uncomfortable and “awkward” being in the concert hall when first going to concerts). However all these tactics only target people who are already aware or interested in the shows, those who are not aware or have not yet had a chance to be introduced by performing arts or classical music are still remain untargeted. Social media sponsorships on blog posts and videos are actually great means for this particular sector because many organizations already their Youtube channel with high quality clips of the performances. While most online ads for the majority of the performing arts organizations remain “pictures or words only”, maybe it is time to think about putting videos out there—a more direct way to introduce the product to those who only surf on web.