Posts Tagged ‘Advertising

Why Negative Reactions are Important and Wanted

Posted at January 28, 2011 // Strategy / Tactics, Web

I have long been a fan of negative comments in the social sphere. I think they are necessary evils. This is because I don’t believe a brand can be all things to all people.

A brand stands above a commodity because it stands for something. A Victoria Secret bra is not your Walmart bra because it’s specifically designed and made to make you feel sexy. However, there is a downside to this. To stand for something automatically means you are not going to stand for something else. A Victoria Secret bra is not cheap. A real brand cannot be everything to everyone. This is not a new concept in marketing, but it’s not a concept that’s always practiced.

Therefore, a clearly positioned brand is always going to have their core targets and their pagans, or nonbelievers. Depending on what you’re selling and how emotional that category is, your pagans can be very loud in the social space. So, as a matter of facts, having pagans tells you you’ve done something right. You’ve taken a stand and clearly defined a space for yourself.

The trick is to take those negative comments from your pagans, and address it in a way that talks to your core believers!

Yes, I am expensive. That’s because we spend millions in research to bring you the best quality product your money can buy. We will not sacrifice quality, ever.

I further elaborated on this topic on Ari Herzog’s Featured Friday series. Check it out!

Tags : Advertising, Guest Post

All LinkedIN to sell to business professionals

Posted at January 27, 2011 // Advertising, Web

Headlines have been flying over the last couple days on new ways to make money in the social networks space. Some of which came out of the Inside Social Apps Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. Here are a few for your reading pleasure…

But one headline in particular jumped out: LinkedIn Pushes Ad Tools appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal.

LinkedIN is a professional social network. For me, it has essentially replaced my rolodex. Contacts I make in business, I invite them in my network on LinkedIn. With special interests groups on LinkedIN, it’s also a great way to connect with others in the industry. From a personal branding perspective, a LinkedIN profile is a must have, so the world (or future employers) can appreciate your professional journey, experience, and network. With the professional bend, LinkedIN users tend to be older than your typical social network crowd. They also tend to be more established in their industries. They are also likely very career driven, and some have found career successes. All in all, this can be a very attractive group to advertisers.

Following other social networks’ footsteps, LinkedIN is going to further develop its advertising offering. The latest include more specific targeting. Now, advertisers can target company, levels, company size, etc. The latest also appears to be incorporating some social context. Of course, if Facebook serves as any type of example, it would suggest that it’d be only a matter of time before more interactive and more intrusive ads will begin to appear on LinkedIN.

The advantage for LinkedIN is that it’s a professional network. As oppose to Facebook where users are looking to relax and connect with friends, LinkedIN users are actively seeking out other professional for business advice or actual services. Therefore, they are more likely to be more open to advertisements.

However, that doesn’t mean everyone should start advertising on LinkedIN. Business Insider has reported in the past how ineffectively LinkedIN advertising has been traditionally. It has been reported that LinkedIN ads cost upward of $30 per click. That’s quite a price premium over a $1 per click cost on paid search. As illustrated by the lack of response to the many discussions on LinkedIN that have been started by “consultants” who are trying to push their services onto the community with little disguise, relevance is still vital. Ads still need to be targeted.

The Wall Street Journal article cited a failed ad campaign by an art gallery. The gallery owner probably correctly identified the demographic target for her ad campaign. Successful business professionals with high discretionary budgets are probably going to be art patrons. However, perhaps she didn’t correctly identify the engagement vehicle. When professionals are browsing on LinkedIN, they have their business hat on. They’re not necessarily thinking about redecorating their homes.

Wall Street Journal reports that American Express and Hewlett-Packard have both signed on as advertisers for the latest ad tools. Both of these advertisers would likely enjoy a good ROI on the LinkedIN campaign as they are business-focused. American Express has been a long time supporter of small business owners with OPEN. It’d be interesting to see how advertising on LinkedIN will continue to evolve and what type of advertisers will succeed on LinkedIN.

Photo credit: via Wall Street Journal

LinkedIn Now Allows Advertisers to Target Users by Job Title & More (mashable.com)
LinkedIn Tries To Juice Up Its Ad Efforts (businessinsider.com)
LinkedIn Adds Granular Ad Targeting (clickz.com)
LinkedIn Pushes Ad Tools (voices.allthingsd.com)
LinkedIn Pushes Ad Targeting (online.wsj.com)

Tags : Advertising, Facebook, LinkedIn, Social network

Am I too old-school for Facebook’s “Sponsored Stories”?

Posted at January 25, 2011 // Web

Dabbling into social media has always been scary for big brands. Because we lose control of it all. Because we allow the voice of a few to be heard, and we can’t just use TV advertising to drown them out. It’s like you have handed over a microphone to everyone, including your haters, and to let them broadcast to the world whatever they want. However, it is still generally advocated that big brand should participate in the social media discussion, good or bad. Why? Well, the discussion is happening anyway, so you may as well be a part of it. It’s the only way you can learn and improve. If someone at your office is circulating rumors about you, wouldn’t you like to know what exactly is being circulated?

Sue is always eating at meeting. What’s worse, she leaves all her napkins and breadcrumbs and stuffs behind in meeting rooms. I hate going into a conference room afterwards. She’s such a mess.

There’s no reason to go talk to John. Just go talk to his boss. I sent him three emails this week, and he didn’t reply to a single one.

Well, turns out John’s grandma passed, and yes, that’s making him a little less responsive. If you were John, you’d want to set the record straight.

Turns out Sue really is a mess. If you were Sue, and you didn’t bother to pay attention to these stories, you may never realize what you were doing is unappealing to people.

So, yes, it’s important to participate in the social space. It’s just part of good customer service – paying attention to your customers.

However, allowing negative comments to happen organically is one thing. I wouldn’t want to pay for negative comments to be broadcasted. Am I really that old-school?

The latest in Facebook’s ad offering is “Sponsored Stories”. This means when a Facebook user interacts with your brand via, Likes, Check-ins or page posts, it gets broadcasted to a much wider Facebook community like an ad would on the sidebar. For example, if a user check-in to your venue, you can paid to have that broadcasted. Now, that’s no so bad when the check in is positive. For example, Megan may check-in at bar X (bar X being the advertiser) and with the comment of “having a great time at happy hour with friend Jane.” Now, all (if the advertiser pays for it all) of Megan’s friends will see on the sidebar that Megan has checked in to venue x and is “having a great time…” This is very on-strategy with a recent Nielsen study that found ads to have social context to be more successful. In this case, Megan is serving to be an endorser of bar x to her friends, without her realizing it.

It wouldn’t be horrible either if the check in turned out to be Jason checking in Starbucks with a comment “still waiting for my date to show up… hope she’s not a no show”.

But what if someone check in to restaurant Z with a comment “just got served raw chicken…” That isn’t so good.

Or someone may just post a negative post on your fan page and says “your place sucks!” And that became the copy that shows up as a “Sponsored Stories”.

Now advertisers do have some control. Advertisers could limit this to just “Likes”. “Likes” are by definition positive. Generally speaking, I don’t have any problems with the existence of the negatives either. I’m believe in negative comments. Because in general, every brand stands for something, which automatically means they are not going to stand for something else. Every brand is supposed to have their pagans. These are people who doesn’t believe what your brand is selling. These are the people who never got it. These are the exactly the opposite of your core consumers. For example, these are the tree huggers and you are a fur coat maker. (I’m using this as an example and using labels to simplify the example. I am not making a political statement here.) But that’s okay. These two can co-exist. Fur coat makers are not trying to sell fur coats to tree huggers. Tree huggers are not their demographic. Fur coat buyers also know that they are not tree huggers, and they’re okay with that. They are okay with tree huggers saying fur coats are bad, and they’ve reconciled themselves with that opinion.

Negative comments are there. They exist regardless of whether social media is around. PETA existed long before Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook promotes this new tactics as being more effective to buy word of mouth.

However, as open minded I’m about negative comments, I’m not sure about this. For some brands, this may not be a concerned at all. For others that have put a hard line in the sand on what they are selling and what they’re not, this is not just embracing the existing of negative comment. This is paying to have them broadcasted. Am I too old-school to think that’s not necessarily a good advertising model?