Accentuate the Positive – Combating Shared Negative Brand Experiences with ORM

Social media users get a kick out of feeling important and influential without the risk of face to face confrontation. The relative anonymity of the web makes it a breeding ground for complaining consumers, especially in the realm of social media.  Negative comments about a particular brand or product can be severely detrimental to a company’s short-term and long-term growth and profitability. This seems like a common sense deduction but a recent Opinion Research study suggests that companies have missed that memo.

According to the survey, 20% of those polled have used social media to speak negatively about a brand. Shockingly, 64% of companies do not have a social media policy or structure in place to combat such negative reporting. And in keeping with the non-confrontational benefits of spewing negativity online, 18% of those surveyed admitted to using an alias in social media circles exclusively. These findings scream out for Online Reputation Management.

The numbers don’t lie, which should make it easier for digital marketers to explain the advantages of instituting an ORM platform into a client’s business model. It’s all about accentuating the positive – controlling the branding message, generating buzz around a product or service, monitoring user postings and improving visibility and enhancing their page one search engine position. By employing this level of due diligence, existing and potential clients will experience the short-term and long-term growth and profitability currently eluding them. But it is up to those in the digital marketing industry to get this positive message out.

The MediaWhiz Manager Spotlight

Director of Business Development for Monetizeit Adam Trentacoste is the first team member profiled in The Manager Spotlight

Recently promoted to Director of Business Development for Monetizeit, Adam Trentacoste wasn’t familiar with affiliate marketing and knew little about online advertising when he started working with MediaWhiz in 2007. His rapid climb up the ladder is indicative of his core business values - ‘hard work, dedication and trust’. In keeping with his business philosophy, Adam believes MediaWhiz’s knowledge of email and list management, data acquisition, search and display set us apart in building ‘that ever important trust factor with your clients’. Adam explains, ‘We are not just an affiliate network’ adding that MediaWhiz is able to ‘…leverage our expertise in all channels of online performance marketing’. Adam sees a ‘bright future for affiliate marketing’ citing traditional and online advertisers shifting budgets toward online performance as well as government regulations undercutting dishonest affiliate and online marketing practices as keys to his belief. Adam hopes this bright future will translate to the continuous improvement of the MediaWhiz softball team and drive positive results for MediaWhiz during an upcoming “Thursty Thursday” performance marketing agency beer pong tournament.

Open Graph – Facebook’s Map to Rule Search

Privacy be damned. With Open Graph, Facebook’s addition to its online platform, the social networking giant is making a thinly veiled play to steal the search crown from Google. Open Graph will allow users to tailor social features on any website and share their modifications through Facebook. For publishers, Open Graph is a search marketing coup d’état allowing them access to Facebook’s four hundred million users whether or not they possess a brand page. For performance marketers, this unprecedented amount of information could improve targeted advertising. Oh and then there’s that little privacy thing.

Open Graph offers a “Like” button, which enables users to put their stamp of approval on certain products and services. In actuality, this feature enhances search utility. Why is this important? Well, in lieu of the recently revealed Nielson Facebook study results, social advocacy on ads increased buyer intent fourfold. The privacy implications of Open Graph may come back to bite Facebook but if it doesn’t, lead generation experts should send Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg a Christmas card. While Google’s philosophy is to improve the way the world accesses and searches for information, Facebook adheres to the belief that social advocacy in the extreme is the key to online advertising dominance.

Accentuating the “Negative” – Why negative keywords could drive very positive results

You know the phrase “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”? Well, in the world of PPC search, negative keywords make the perfect thirst quencher.  By incorporating negative keywords into your pay-per-click campaign, you ensure that you don’t come up in searches for that term.  Confused? Don’t worry.

Let’s say you were running a search campaign for Bank of America. They may fear that Bank of America financial crisis will appear in searches. Adding “financial crisis” as negative keywords will put an end to your search concerns. By going negative, you will generate relevant searches keeping your traffic on target. Qualified leads will save you money by preventing unwanted clicks. Negative keywords also protect your online image and the value of your brand.  Save money, increase brand value, enhance online reputation; sometimes you have to go negative to be positive.

Dissolution or Revolution – Will Traditional Advertising Agencies Finally Get Onboard the Digital Bus?

The traditional advertising agency is in a state of flux. Long accustomed to creating campaigns for print, radio, television and direct mail clients, the traditional agency model has been slow to adjust to the demands of digital advertising, namely online, viral and mobile marketing. When you consider that advertising is rooted in creativity, that outside the box strategy drives success within the medium, the unwillingness of, or perhaps more frighteningly the ineffectualness of traditional markets to evolve is rather mind-boggling. But on the heels of the Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) Council’s latest State of Marketing survey, the potentially devastating financial fallout to conventional advertising agencies may be precisely the spark the genre needs to get with the interactive age.

The survey reveals that senior marketing experts are anticipating a significant shift away from traditional agencies in favor of increases in digitally-minded hires, in-house training solutions and working relationships with digital agencies. In keeping with the study’s findings a new breed of consultant is springing forth to provide systemic, infrastructural and technological advances to marketers in lieu of old-fashioned advertising agencies. Given that the CMO manages nearly $200 billion is annual marketing budgets, the figurative dark cloud hovering over the traditional model is becoming more demoralizing by the minute.

Traditional advertising’s dilemma has been performance and affiliate marketing’s gain. PPC and SEO are not only cost-effective alternatives to conventional advertising, they bolster visibility increasing ROI. And yet with all the gloom and doom talk, traditional advertising has not picked out its coffin just yet. Last time I checked, television watching and radio listening hasn’t gone the way of the dinosaur. The T-Rex never did get with evolution. It didn’t adapt. There’s still time for traditional advertising to embrace digital. But it would be unwise to wait much longer.

Making a Good Overall Impression on Facebook

We’ve all heard the old adage, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Now, before you panic, this blog post will not regress into a litany of clichés. And you have Facebook and Nielson to thank for that. In a study examining the reach and effectiveness of Facebook impressions, Nielson determined that users of the social networking site were more prone to notice ads and purchase brands if they featured earned media and social advocacy. Alas, good impressions that incorporate positive word of mouth win out.

Nielson’s research involved analyzing three forms of Facebook impressions: Homepage ads, Social impressions and Organic impressions. Essentially, Nielson was evaluating the strength of paid and earned media, the former referring to advertising publicity and the latter alluding to publicity gained through favorable opinion. A “Become a Fan” ad created solely to engage the user with a brand is a homepage ad, an example of paid media. A “Become a Fan” ad that also lists the names of other fans in the user’s friend network is a social impression, a blending of earned and paid media. Lastly, an organic impression is a promotional tool that appears on a page belonging to the user’s friend. This impression announces that the friend is a fan of a brand, a type of earned media.

Nielson concluded that social advocacy in Facebook ads doubled awareness among users. More importantly, it resulted in a 4x increase in buyer intent. The lead generation significance in the wake of these findings is palpable. Performance marketers should incorporate the Nielson study into their CPM pitch. The message to advertisers shouldn’t be about making a good first impression. The message should focus on making three – creating a compelling home page to foster organic impressions, stressing the importance of social impressions by investing in paid media and giving due consideration to each impression category for premium campaign effectiveness.

Compliance in online marketing: A case for the long haul

By:  Peter Klein, GM of MonetizeIt, MediaWhiz

I started my career in the direct mail world of magazines, “As Seen on TV” products, and sweepstakes offering people a chance at riches. Probably our most questionable tactic back then consisted of making the following exciting, emotional claim; “You could almost possibly already be a winner!” Despite the hyperbole, ten million dollar and one million dollar grand prizes continue to be awarded annually to a fortunate few. It is a real testament to compliance and self-regulation.
In contrast, many of today's online marketers profit from deceptive techniques, false claims and taxation. The Internet has become saturated with fake blogs and fake articles, commonly and not so affectionately referred to as “flogs” and “farticles.” These pages not only make unsubstantiated claims that cause people to spend money and ingest a potentially toxic cocktail of unproven home remedy-type products; they also result in advertisers losing their merchant accounts. How do these companies and affiliates get away with such chicanery? They lack compliance and self-regulation.
Determining how and when to monitor publishers and ensure compliance can be a slippery slope. When these irresponsible parties get blacklisted, will the volume of companies and affiliates contract? This question needs to be carefully considered. Still, FTC involvement levying fines, handing out lawsuits, and assessing future regulations will go a long way toward instituting best practices across the varied media courses.
Compliance and self-regulation are issues of great personal importance. Having spent fifteen years working in direct marketing, I fully recognize the role I played in promoting such practices. But it is this level of understanding that has caused me to reevaluate my prior philosophy and establish better ways of doing business. For example, instituting improved monitoring tools and best of breed practices can diligently protect the brand image of the client. Making branded offers available exclusively to a select group of trusted partners who directly control the media promotes transparency and builds confidence.
Additionally, I believe that creating online governing boards is an idea whose time has come. Global blacklists, standardized regulations, and even scoring affiliates would advance financial and ethical responsibility among Internet marketers. Gravitating toward this limited inclusion model is something of a corrective shift by us “old timers” who expanded the online space over the past decade and remain committed to it for the long haul.
As more dollars pour into the online space, it is time for marketers to unite if we want to avoid the government regulations currently impacting the radio, TV and print mediums. Once that happens, progress will be slowed and all moves will be long-term by default.
Those who have spurious short-term monetary goals are often envied and, at times, held in high esteem. But in my opinion, it is more estimable to execute your wealth building strategy the right way: through compliance and self-regulation.

Tweeting for Cha-Ching

Twitter has announced its intention to enter the world of advertising, posting ad tweets to searches. When word broke, a collective tweet of horror emanated from Twitter’s vast online networking space. But are the alarm bells unwarranted? If there was a tweet for the word yes, this would be the perfect time to make that little blue birdie sing.
Twitter’s simple, non-invasive advertising plan goes like this – brands with websites on Twitter or those interested in developing such an online presence will be able to purchase what Twitter’s calling Promoted Tweets about their products; the goal being top placement on search engines. In actuality, Twitter has been an unofficial advertising medium for some time. Unlike those informal ads, Promoted Tweets will be obvious enough to get noticed but understated enough to ward off mass user hysteria.
Twitter’s marketing model seems like a well-executed no-brainer but if you read between the lines, you’ll grasp its underlying significant message – Twitter needs loot. And their mechanism for generating profit should prove fruitful for both the social media giant and advertising brands, especially if the latter are wise enough to acquire Promoted Tweets on trending topic searches.
Promoted Tweets, as currently constituted, is a PPC system, charging companies for every 1000 people who view a tweet. So how does this news positively affect performance marketing? Perhaps the question should be posed as follows – How can savvy marketers effectively incorporate Promoted Tweets into their marketing spend? Our agency needs to strike while the ad tweeting is hot to help advertisers recognize precisely when potential customers are seeking information on desire products or services, thus, enabling them to get the highest return on their marketing spend.