Good Ideas Are a Dime a Dozen, But Implementation is Priceless

What Do Older People Do Every Day?

Mike Blaney — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:56:21 +0000

A recent Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends Survey on Aging among a nationally representative sample of 2,969 adults uncovers some interesting characteristics of senior’s lives.

Survey respondents ages 18 to 29 believe that the average person becomes old at age 60. Middle-aged respondents put the threshold closer to 70, and respondents ages 65 and above say that the average person does not become old until turning 74. I am in my early fifties and know so many vibrant people in their 80’s that I think old age is not chronological, but a state of mind.

So what is old age? The average response was 68.

What I found most interesting among scads of findings was what older people do every day. One key finding was not to market to them over the internet as only 28% use the internet. Magazines, newspapers and TV are the best mediums to reach this group.

Below is a chart published by Pew Internet that details the daily activities of older people:

Daily Activities of Older Americans

You can read more on the Pew Research website by clicking here to go to their website.

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Have You Taken Sides in the Coffee Wars?

Mike Blaney — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:34:08 +0000

Apparently there is a coffee war on in the U.S. and things are heating up. As of June 4th here is where the combatants stand:

#1 Starbucks
#2 McDonald s
#3 Dunkin Donuts

According to an analysis of BIGresearch’s May 2009 Consumer Intentions & Actions (CIA) Survey published on the Direct Marketing Association website 9.2 percent of consumers frequent Starbucks most often.

The results are not surprising if you have ever been into a Starbucks or McDonalds. It will be interesting to see wher McDonalds spends its $100 million dollars in their new advertising campaign know the results of this survey.

Here are some of the findings.

Age Difference
McDonald’s coffee drinkers tend to be older than Starbucks drinkers with an average age of 47.7 (vs. 39.2 for Starbucks drinkers).
46.8 percent of Starbucks drinkers are in the 18-34 age range, compared to 25.8 percent for McDonald’s.

Marital Status
More Starbucks coffee drinkers are single at 29.1 percent vs. 19 percent of McDonald’s drinkers.

Socio-economics
Starbucks customers have a higher percentage of customers with professional/managerial positions at their place of work – 27.2 percent vs.15.7 percent at McDonals. They also report a higher annual income of $67,487 vs. $55,572. (You need the higher income to afford a Starbucks!)

Miscellaneous Findings

33.7 percent of McDonald’s coffee drinkers are confident/very confident in the economy, vs. 30.3 percent of Starbucks drinkers.
26.4 percent of McDonald’s drinkers feel better about their economic situation, vs. 34.4 percent of Starbucks drinkers.
72.7 percent of McDonald’s drinkers are focusing more on needs over wants, vs. 65.7 percent of Starbucks drinkers.
44.2 percent of McDonald’s drinkers are buying more store brand/generics vs. 36.2 percent of Starbucks drinkers.
20.8 percent of McDonald’s drinkers are starting to spend more on discretionary items, vs. 21.4 percent of Starbucks drinkers.

For additional complimentary data and charts: http://info.bigresearch.com/.

Ask Mike: Do Promotional Items Really Work

Mike Blaney — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:13:19 +0000

A subscriber to this blog recently emailed me with this question:

I came across your site while trying to figure out the best value in marketing dollars. I own a mortgage company and my loan officers keep asking me to buy promotional items with our logo; i.e. Frisbees, magnets, rulers, pens etc. I do not understand how these items can increase my business. Are there any reports to compare ROI for promotional items and why exactly people think these are a good marketing tool? Your opinion would be appreciated.

There is no easy answer, but I wrote a blog post about this (click here) and the first paragraph has a link to an Advertising Specialties Impressions Study that may shed some light on this question.

My opinion is that maintaining “Top of the Mind Awareness” is important, but it depends on the frequency that your clients will use your service. I do question whether a novelty item like a frisbee has enough impact to get a Realtor to think about you over the other broker versus an item of value that helps them in their business. I think the money spent on promotional items could be redirected to a blog and providing information to your clients that will help them achieve more sales. A monthly case study about a difficult to finance situation or a newsletter with useful information can have more impact than a promotional item.

A phone call is even better and a personal visit outweighs everything else in my opinion. A

Click for a larger image

client of mine who is a Mortgage Broker adds extra value by providing what she calls Affordability Sheets and Community Amenity maps printed in color that Realtors can give out at their open houses. It makes the Realtor look more professional and the 10 color versions of each are free. This gesture keeps her at the top of mind right when it counts; at an open house. She also takes donuts in to the real estate office in a branded donut box (http://themarketingguy.wordpress.com/thanks-a-dozen/) that gets attention too.

Another semi-annual item that this client uses is a memo pad personalized with the recipient’s name with the minimal branding located on a perforated strip at the bottom so

Click for a larger image

the Realtor can have a clean Things To Do List of their own. They can just tear off the branding. Who throws that out? (http://themarketingguy.wordpress.com/2007/05/04/give-to-get-marketing-personalized-memo-pads/)

This is strong stuff, but often promotional items are used as a crutch to take the place of a phone call or visit and historically people always look for the easy route. Compared to looking through a catalog and emailing a logo, it takes time to create something that adds value to another person’s business, but over the long term I think it creates a deeper relationship.

So if you plan to use promotional items consider the following:

the frequency clients purchase your product or service
the season of the year
will it be left at the office or taken home
is it a novelty item or useful item of value
what is the potential return on investment
what are your competitors doing
what have you received that made an impact on you
what will the cost of distribution be
how long will it last
does it look like you are trying to buy their business

And the most important question for any marketing strategy -

can you measure the effectiveness?

Best Banner Ad Ever

Mike Blaney — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:30:28 +0000

I admit I am a sucker for anything to do with marketing and when I saw a post about the best banner ad ever I had to take a look. It is well worth a visit to this website and make sure you click where it says

Pringles Ad - Click to Participate

click. I guarantee nothing bad will happen and it will prove how effective banner advertising can really be. Click here to go to the ad.

Source: Bridge Worldwide 2009: Cannes Cyber Lions Gold – Pringles Can Hands

Home Buyers Twice as Likely to Use Online vs Print to Find an Open House

Mike Blaney — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:45:01 +0000

This is a blog post about home buyers, real estate, marketing, websites and search engine optimization so it has a little bit for everybody.

A survey commissioned by Trulia and conducted by Harris Interactive shows that U.S. home buyers are twice as likely to use online sources than print sources to find open house information.

Trulia is an online listing service so these results reinforce what we already know from other surveys including the National Association of Realtors surveys that show more than 75% of home buyers plan to start their home search on the web.

Key Survey Results

62 percent of U.S. home buyers reported using/planning to use online sites to find open houses.
53 percent who use/plan to use information from real estate agents
36 percent who use/plan to use neighborhood signs
31 percent who reported using/planning to use print sources, including newspapers and local flyers to find open houses.

I work with a lot of Realtors and read a lot of real estate related marketing information and there is a large percentage of Realtors that voice the opinion that open houses are a “waste of time” and say “I have never sold a house at an open”. They might want to take note that this survey shows that 91 percent of home buyers attended/plan to attend open houses during the home buying process. I think this is proof that an open house is an important part of the marketing mix.

I have created a number of websites using Ubertor web templates and the biggest selling point is how effective their blog platform is with search engines. When a Realtor takes 30 seconds to add an open house to their website using the Content Management System a blog entry is created automatically. This blog post in turn has proven extremely effective in web searches.

I am going out on a limb here as I do not know where you are located, but if you do a Google search for ambleside open house I will bet the majority of your results will be websites using the Ubertor platform. What is ironic is the first website on this search is Tony Breen who is one of my clients and I added the open house a year ago and it still gets him results.

Screen Capture of a Google Search for Ambleside Open House

If you are interested in a new website that search engines actually find without spending thousands on SEO please call Mike at 800-568-8338 or send me an email at marketingguy@shaw.ca.

The Top 5 Reasons People Unsubscribe From Newsletters

Mike Blaney — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:29:36 +0000

Do you email a newsletter or other publication to subscribers? Do you subscribe to RSS feeds or email newsletters?

I have two marketing tools I use that have subscribers; a monthly newsletter for my email stationery clients (www.inboxfx.com) and this blog which has almost 300 subscribers. Thanks to all of you for giving me the incentive to keep posting) I attract subscribers to this blog by adding the following to the bottom of the email.

According to an Epsilon and ROI Research study, 55% of email subscribers in the US and Canada unsubscribe from opt-in emails occasionally—and 14% do so frequently.

The top 5 reasons people give for unsubscribing are as follows:

67% – Irrelevant content
64% – Receive too frequently
50% – Think their email address is being shared or sold
48% – Don’t recall signing up
32% Privacy concerns

Since my content is relevant, and not too frequent and I never sell or share an email address or disclose my recipient’s names I get very few unsubscribers and I hope this post doesn’t remind people they are bored.

New Study on Effectiveness of Banner Ads

Mike Blaney — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:03:30 +0000

A recently completed study on the effectiveness of banner ads provides some interesting data for advertisers.

Condé Nast and McPheters & Company have jointly released additional results from the recently completed study conducted in collaboration with CBS Vision using McPheters & Company’s AdWorks™ methodology. More detailed analysis explored the relative effectiveness of Internet banner ads that were aligned with the content of the Web sites in which they appeared – for example, food ads running on food sites, entertainment ads on entertainment sites, etc. – vs. those that were not. The new analysis found that:

Ads running on sites with related content were 61% more likely to be recalled than ads running on sites with unrelated content.
Recall of ads varied by site type.
- Social network, shopping, and food sites generated the highest recall levels (29% to 39%).
- Search and portal sites generated the lowest recall levels.
There were large differences in recall by type of product advertised.

According to Scott McDonald, Condé Nast SVP/Research, “the magnitude of the differences we found offers compelling evidence that targeting by site yields important benefits for advertisers.” Drew Schutte, SVP and Chief Revenue Officer for Condé Nast Digital, added “while we have long known that context is important for print advertisers, we welcome proof that the same is true online. These results reinforce the importance of a marketer being associated with category-specific Web sites with established brands.”

In the analysis, each of the 400 ads for which recall was measured was associated with the Web sites in which they appeared. Ads were segmented by whether they appeared on Web sites with related content. Recall of ads was measured among Internet users who were directed to surf the Internet at will for 30 minutes. McPheters & Company fielded the survey at CBS Vision’s Television City lab facilities in Las Vegas. Rebecca McPheters, CEO of McPheters & Company, noted that “while AdWorks™ excels in providing comparable measures of ad effectiveness across multiple media, it also provides a unique opportunity to explore and better understand what works online. It can be used to successfully identify best practices not only for capturing the attention of online audiences but for placing ads where they will have the maximum impact.”

In a review by OnLine Media Daily they reported that from data released earlier in the year by Condé Nast and McPheters & Co., nearly two-thirds — 63% — of banner ads were not seen by Web users. Respondents’ eyes “passed over” 37% of the Internet ads and “stopped” on slightly less than a third, McPheters found.

In contrast to online ads, TV and magazine ads generated a strong propensity to be seen and recalled, according to the research.

Full-page, four-color magazine ads were determined to have 83% of the value of a 30-second television commercial, while a typical Internet banner ad has 16% of the value.

New Eye Tracking Study: List Layouts

Mike Blaney — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:40:28 +0000

The Catalyst Group provides a wide range of services that make your website or application as simple and useful as possible so that it performs measurably better.

They recently published the results of a new eye Tracking study of “friends” list layouts on Facebook and Linkedin. I thought the results were interesting as we often have to present information to clients and prospects and it turns out the layout makes a difference.

Facebook uses a one column layout and Linkedin uses a 3 column layout like these:

1 Column Facebook

3 Column Linkedin

Overall, the 1-Column layout was a much more effective and enjoyable way of presenting the tested information. The single column of names was easy to read straight down during the Name Recognition Task, and users were able to “ignore” the adjacent column which contained information that wasn’t relevant to the current task.

Eye Tracking data revealed that virtually all participants scanned the 1-Column layout the same way and there was very little hesitation or exploration at the start of the task – users were able to dive right into scanning without having to experiment with different scanning strategies (a phenomenon which was observed with the 3-Column layout).

The 3-Column layout was thought by most participants to be more cumbersome

1 Column Facebook Initial Few Seconds

and overwhelming in its design – more “tiring” according to one participant. (See image below) Also, participants felt much less confident that they had successfully completed the tasks with the 3-Column layout. In other words, they did not feel sure that they had seen all the names.

The Eye Tracking of the 3-Column layout revealed that the participants did not adopt a consistent scanning strategy for this design. Moreover, most participants had to begin by experimenting with different scanning strategies before “deciding” which one to use. This uncertainty was exacerbated by the need to

3 Column Linkedin Initial Few Sections

scroll the page in order to see the full 3-column list. Many participants found that they had lost their place on the page after scrolling and had to backtrack up the page.

Eye Tracking is a service that literally tells you where website users are looking on a screen as they attempt to complete a specific task or simply explore freely. This information can help you make informed decisions about a variety of key design elements, such as task workflow, site navigation, and advertising placement and formats. Eye Tracking can help by supplementing what users “say” with what their eyes “see.”

The most popular output from the Eye Tracking system is “Heatmaps” that graphically illustrate the intensity of attention that certain areas of a page received.

Sample Heatmap

“Gaze-plots” are another useful graphic report that indicates where users fixated on the page, for how long, and in what order.

For more information you should visit the Catalyst Group website.

Direct Marketing Study Results

Mike Blaney — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:44:10 +0000

The Direct Marketing Association has just released the Power of Direct economic impact study. There were some interesting findings on Return On Investment (ROI) and the amount being spent on different forms of direct marketing.

Email’s ROI in 2008 was $45.06 for every dollar spent on it which is lower than the $48.34 in the previous year.
Non-e-mail Internet marketing delivered $19.94 for every dollar spent.
Catalog marketing delivered $7.28 for every dollar spent.
Non-catalog direct marketing’s ROI was $15.55.

Marketing Expenditures by Channel

Email – $600 million
Non-email Internet marketing – $24.1 billion
Telephone marketing (estimated) – $42.5 billion (Now I know why we get so many calls at dinner!)

What Results Can They Deliver According to the DMA?

Non-e-mail Internet marketing – $559 billion in sales in 2009
Non-catalog direct mail – $561.7 billion in sales in 2009
Email – $32.6 billion in sales in 2009

Thanks to Direct, A Chief Marketer Stop for some of the information used here.

Text Messaging – What Happened to Talking?

Mike Blaney — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:39:50 +0000

According to anew survey by Vlingo titled the Second Annual Vlingo Consumer Mobile Messaging Habits Report, (Click here for a pdf) nearly 60% of mobile phone users are now texting compared to 54% in 2008.

By the way Vlingo is a company that has products that let you control your mobile phone with the

My Cell Phone Bill is What!!!!!

power of voice. With Vlingo, you can simply speak to your phone to send a text or email message. Go figure.

Further to my last post about rearing 6 Millennials between the ages of 18 and 26 I confess I use text messaging and I am in my 50’s (early). I swore I would never resort to such an impersonal form of communication, but call screening by my kids drove me to it. Apparently I am one of the 46% of people in their 50s that text compared to 94% of teens, 87% of 20-somethings and 64% of people in their 40s that text message.

Back to my story of how texting became a necessity of life. We used to call all 6 kids to invite them for dinner the next Sunday and by the time we got through to them it was almost Monday. It was a combination of my calls being screened and not being able to answer their phones at work or during class. After overseeing the purchase of the 1.000 text message plan for two of the subjects in question I realized this might be a way of reducing the time lag between the invite and the event. Bingo! I send a atext to the 6 kids and their significant others to prevent double-booking and within seconds I have answers from all of them. Text messaging is the only reliable method of communicating with these Millennials.

Here are some other interesting results:

35% of all respondents use their phones for texting more than for phone calls.
41% do not text
70% do not browse the Web
73% do not use email on their mobile phones
Almost 50% of respondents do both in equal numbers.
Among those who do not text message, 27% cite the difficulty of typing on a tiny keyboard as a barrier, while 37% say it takes too much time to type.