Jul
24th

The Dark Knight Gets Serious about Social Media Marketing

Posted by Maureen on July 24, 2008 at 9:36 am

Like a viral plague of fear spread over Gotham City, Batman has taken over the internet with the use of effective social media marketing tactics. And the tactics have worked. According to CNN.com, “The Dark Knight” took in $155.34 million in it’s first weekend, beating out “Spider Man 3″ for best opening weekend ever at the box office. That’s a lot of cash, created by a lot of buzz.

dark knight batman posterSome of that buzz was generated by the early death of Heath Ledger, who plays the movie’s maniacal Joker – brilliantly. But the carefully planned use of social media marketing to correctly target “The Dark Knight” audience also contributed to those record breaking numbers.

The official movie website provides video, still photographs, downloads, an iPhone app, a mobile game and more. The site was released well before the film was in theatres, allowing fans to interact with the characters, heightening the anticipation and guaranteeing that the movie stayed top of mind with the target audience.

Other social media marketing tactics included several microsites and a takeover of the MySpace homepage. One interesting interactive feature that is continuing to generate buzz involves committing your friend by placing a photograph of their face on the body of an insane asylum inmate.

So it’s true. Social media marketing is a great way to generate buzz about your business or products. But as we can see from the examples above, it isn’t just about having a MySpace or Facebook page. There are several different social media tactics helping to promote Batman. The key is choosing a combination that is right for your specific audience and product.

To find out more about how to make social media marketing work for you, download our two-part social media marketing series: The Secrets of Social Marketing Success.

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Jul
23rd

Bidding on Competitor Trademarks is Bad Business

Posted by Vern on July 23, 2008 at 9:27 am

Last week, American Airlines dropped its lawsuit against Google for allowing competitors to bid on trademark names via Google AdWords. The out-of-court settlement ends a nearly year-long battle between the airline and the search giant.

3 Stooges in courtThe case is but one example in a long history of corporation suing corporation over keyword bidding practices. There’s no doubt that it’s a fairly widespread practice. But what’s all the fuss about?

In-house paid search marketing teams (and some agencies) need to get a clue and spend their ad budgets more efficiently. Bidding on your competitor’s name is bad business, but not because of the legal liability. It’s a waste of money!

When someone searches “American Airlines” in Google are they likely to click on an ad for Southwest Airlines? I argue – NO! Southwest Airlines is not what the searcher is looking for, so why on earth would they click on a Southwest ad?

Oneupweb has been managing paid search initiatives for clients in many different industries for nearly five years. In the early days, when Google was a private company and Yahoo was just beginning to integrate Overture, we tested bidding on competitor names as search engine rules allowed. What we found was quite interesting.

While ads served on competitor name searches did see an expected number of impressions, click-through rates were very low and conversions nonexistent. Disappointing results that didn’t justify the click spend. And certainly didn’t justify the time spent adding the competitor keywords to the paid search campaigns.

The Moral of the Story: Be more efficient with your PPC account management. Don’t waste your time and money bidding on competitor names, and give your legal team the rest of the year off.

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Jul
22nd

The New York Times & LinkedIn Link Up

Posted by Steve on July 22, 2008 at 2:27 pm

Yesterday, LinkedIn announced a new partnership with The New York Times. The basis of the partnership? Greater targeting for both users and advertisers.

LinkedIn members browsing the Business and Technology sections of NYTimes.com will now have the option to view highly targeted related news stories based on non-identifiable profile attributes.

How Does It Work?

LinkedIn will power the dynamically-generated custom headline feature of NYTimes.com in order to serve the five most recent news articles based on certain LinkedIn member attributes, which include industry, company size, job function, seniority, gender and location.

If you’re browsing through Business or Technology articles on NYTimes.com and are not logged in to your LinkedIn profile, you will be prompted to “Get Headlines About Your Industry”. Here is a screen capture of this prompt:

nytimes screenshot

When I click to activate, I am taken to the partnership page on NYTimes.com where I can join or sign in to LinkedIn. Once logged in, I am served the five most recent and relevant articles based on my profile information:

nytimes screenshot

You will see that these “more targeted” articles each differ from those served prior to me logging in to my LinkedIn account. After logging in, I am served articles more relevant to Technology. This is somewhat interesting to see as the industry specified in my LinkedIn profile is Marketing and Advertising. Apparently, this has been identified as the most relevant category based on my specified industry. Other profile attributes, however, may also be coming into play.

Once logged in to my profile, I also have the option to share articles on NYTimes.com with contacts in the LinkedIn community.

Who Benefits from This Partnership?

Well, LinkedIn for one. Increased brand awareness on, and direct association with, the most popular newspaper website in the U.S. will likely help to boost LinkedIn’s current user base, which stands at nearly 25 million.

NYTimes.com could also experience an increased user base. For most professionals, it is likely that they have their go-to news sources and that loyalty will trump the benefit which could be experienced from this new partnership. For some LinkedIn members who currently get their news from sources other than NYTimes.com, however, the appeal of a more targeted and social browsing experience may outweigh any loyalty they have toward other news sites.

In addition to an enhanced user base, The Times is set to benefit from increased ad revenue. Given the popularity of LinkedIn, this more targeted article-serving approach is an enticing option for advertisers to explore when deciding how and where to allocate budget.

The potential for a greater number of advertisers and increased ad revenue is the most appealing part of this partnership for NYTimes.com. It is interesting to see how The Times is increasingly embracing not only the advantages of the evolving Web, but also the considerable opportunity available for ad revenue generation from their highly authoritative and popular site.

Last September, I reported that The New York Times was killing their TimeSelect program, a program which was designed to increase subscription-based revenue by blocking portions of the site from non-members. After two years, The Times realized that the potential for ad-based revenue far outweighed that generated from TimeSelect.

They also realized the potential for a greater user base by opening up their site. In September, the NYTimes.com had 13 million visitors, as reported. In June, according to Nielsen Online, NYTimes.com had 17.7 million unique visitors.

Finally, for those of us who utilize both LinkedIn and NYTimes.com, we, the users, will benefit from this alliance. Given the commitment of LinkedIn to uphold the privacy of its user base, this appears to be a win-win-win situation, at least for the time being.

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Jul
21st

Managing Franchise PPC Campaigns

Posted by Leah Singer on July 21, 2008 at 4:27 pm

Managing franchise clients can be an interesting feat in the world of paid search marketing.

More than likely, not only are you advertising for the ‘corporate’ Papa Bear, but you have the responsibility of managing PPC advertising for the entire family – the whole bear cub pack.

papa bearSeparating the bear pack into individual baby bears is the key element when dealing with your corporate bear family. Papa Bear and the cub pack want to see metrics on a cub-by-cub level (OK, enough with the bears).

It’s imperative for franchisee owners and corporate to know how their local franchise PPC campaigns are performing. The best way to manage this success is to branch-out campaigns and tracking.

To have an accurate account of franchise-level performance, each franchise branch should have its own PPC campaign. Now that each franchise has its own campaign within the engines, you can more specifically target the audience you want to reach. This will make it easier to ensure that the franchises are only advertising to potential clients, not everybody and their brother.

You should also use unique tracking codes for each franchise. That way when you look at date from your analytics system, you’ll have metrics for each franchise instead of one lump sum of information for all franchises.

In summary, when bears come out of the woods to start their PPC advertising, organizing the cub pack into individual baby bears will be the key to your success. More importantly, it will make Papa Bear proud.

For additional insights into marketing online for franchisors, download our recent white paper: Local Search Solutions for Franchisors.

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Jul
17th

Google While You Sleep – The Power of News Alerts

Posted by Duncan on July 17, 2008 at 1:37 pm

Did you know you can Google while sleeping? You can. I am not talking about some type of bio-electronic shunt that plugs into your brain while you dream, rather a simple service called Google News Alerts. Google News Alerts are a powerful tool for both business and personal use.
google_news_alerts.JPG

On the business side you can use News alerts to track your reputation, your company’s reputation, news about your industry, news about your clients, and news about your competitors. It is really easy. Just go to the interface and setup it up for the keywords you want to track. Choose the type of media you want to track. Choices include News, Blogs, Web, Groups, Video and Comprehensive. Make sure you use wise keyword choices and use several keywords if necessary. For instance you may want to list your company’s name, its domain name, and product names as keywords. Do the same for anything else you want to keep up with.

For personal search there are no limits. Perhaps you are going to take a trip and want to receive alerts on the happenings in the town or city you are going to. Maybe you want alerts for the university you plan to attend, or perhaps the one you graduated from. Perhaps you are eyeing a new car, or other major purchase and want to see if the product is making news for a few days before you buy. Alerts can be very handy for fantasy sports junkies.

Choose a reasonable time frame for Google to send you the results. You can choose from Once a Day, Weekly, or As it Happens. Make sure you set it up so that the alerts are manageable. Timing the delivery right is your key to avoiding in box overload. You may even want to schedule different times for different topics. For instance, you should track your company’s name on an As it Happens basis.

You can turn the alerts off and on easily, so do not feel like you are stuck with this information push forever.

In the summary, this is a great service and saves you the time of manually searching for things on a daily basis. That’s about all you need to know on Google News Alerts. Have fun with them.

By the way I am going to setup an alert for bio-electronic data shunt (so I can insert a USB cable behind my left ear). I’ll set it to As it Happens. Surely it will be the right thing to do.

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