Polo advertising on MSN

Since the 1990’s we have seen an increase in banner blindness and a switch from traditional banner and skyscraper ads to other forms of online advertising.   Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook now play a large part in many businesses digital marketing strategy.

This new type of onsite advertising is so prominent the user is forced to notice it.  I’m not sure this will catch on, it seems too much in your face and detracts the user from the purpose of the site.  But I’m sure MSN aren’t complaining about the extra bob or two!

Special K advertising on MSN

If you click on the link in red it will bring up the following screen:

You can then watch a quick demo of priority inbox and then Click on “Try it now” to activate it in your account.

How Google determines a Priority email

Google determines a priority email automatically by analysing the people you are in contact with the most and chat with the most.  It also analyses the keywords that you most frequently use in your emails and detects emails with those keywords as priority.

If Google makes a mistaken in what its determined as a priority email for you, then you can use the 2 additional filtering buttons as highlighted above, to correct that and mark what you consider to be a Priority or not. Google will remember these settings for the next time you receive an email from those contacts in your account and separate them accordingly under “important and unread” and “Everything else” as shown in the below screen shot.

There are various additional filters that you can apply to your account as well by going into the Gmail settings, such as using the filters to guarantee that messages you consider as important do get highlighted as important when they enter your inbox as well as being able to search for emails by importance.

If you’re not happy with Gmail priority inbox then you can always revert back to your old inbox. Happy experimenting!

BBC homepage not cached

Amazon homepage not cached

The Facebook homepage appears to be OK however:

Facebook homepage cached

I don’t know what’s going on there but I bet a few SEO’s have turned a bit white at some point today…

Well that’s how I read into it anyway, and it actually conveniently fits the angle of this blog post, so it’s interesting to see that in romanticising the past they use aspects of the latest online technology and social media to do (as far as I’m aware) what no band has done before and release an online bespoke music video, tailored to the user based on where you grew up!

In partnership with Google, they have released “The Wilderness Downtown” – a combination of HTML5 and Google Maps – that shows the character of the video running down some road and eventually round the location that you entered at the start, in the screenshot below, it’s street I grew up on in Horwich:

The use of multiple browser windows works really well as various synchronised angles of the view run in time to the music. As well as working well from an online point of view, the song also seems to fit well watching footage of the town where you grew up (though there is probably more impact if you no longer live there).

Tip: for “some reason”, it apparently works best in Google Chrome, so if you want to enjoy the video to its full potential, you might have to download this first if you don’t already have it.

Arcade Fire are no strangers to the adoption of the web and social media in promoting themselves, they recently streamed a gig live from Madison Square Garden on YouTube which attracted nearly four million viewers, offered various camera angles and was directed by Terry Gilliam!

Releasing videos online and adopting social media to promote singles and albums isn’t something new, but on this occasion the band has certainly come up with something innovating and this could well be a ground breaking move by them in terms of how music videos will be produced in the future. It will certainly be interesting to see what follows. Bet Lady Gaga is racking her brains over her next release.

YouTube want to provide its customers with several different kinds of videos to watch, ranging from bedroom blogs, journalism reports, TV ads to music videos and full length feature films.

In August 2010, as a result of deals and partnerships YouTube has struck with top US studios, they have officially made this revolution possible. YouTube has released various movie channels for musical Bollywood films and cartoons to seriously spooky horror films. They have also created a dedicated channel for Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan fans where you will have access to some of their greatest full length feature films.

Thank you, YouTube, as word spreads, YouTube is going to take over video streaming all together. Watch this space!

Following the launch in other cities around the world, countries such as Germany, Korea and Spain have all voice concerns over privacy and data being collected by the cars, which presumably in part has led to this decision.

Google themselves state they are “doing more than is legally required” to protect people’s privacy by allowing anyone to request the removal of their property. Once validated, the building will be blurred out.

What I find interesting is that Google have set a deadline of September 15, 2010, for getting a request submitted. I’m sure there is a valid reason for this, but it seems tight and people will no doubt only become aware of the extent of what Google has caught on camera once it’s gone live!

Another interesting step in this saga sees the German government proactively getting involved and inviting Google and others to discuss privacy and security implications and potential legislations. What makes this more interesting is the viewpoint of the Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere, who says:

“There are people who on the one hand tweet about their entire private life … but on the other hand fight against their (home’s) facade being photographed, that is absurd. There need to be regulations on the matter – but we shouldn’t become hysterical.”

I think first, Herr Maiziere needs to understand the difference between opt in and opt out. People are free to say and share what they like on Twitter and Facebook, whereas, till now, they’ve had no choice as to whether they wish to appear on Street View or not!

In July I chaired a panel at the British Library on Social Media. There were some really good tips and I would like to share some of the best here.

Use social media for crowd sourcing, which is basically asking questions of your followers. Many companies often say they have nothing, or don’t know what to talk about. So instead just tweet “what is the biggest problem you are currently facing?” or “what do you think are the key issues facing the … industry?” This will get the conversation started. 

Use social media to amplify the conversations which are happening in the real world of your businesses. If people/customers are asking your sales people or support lines questions, share the information online. This is a really good way of taking information which is timely and relevant which works really well with social which is ultimately a conversation, and therefore time based.

A strong theme was ‘engage before you promote,’ by which I mean don’t just go and spam your followers with tons of sales tweets. Start by building relationships and then promote. Promotions with news relevance also work really well as it includes a familiarity aspect in the promotion.

YouTube is becoming the new place to run TV style advertising, especially if there is a viral element. The great thing about this is that a YouTube advert is much closer to a click than someone watching a TV advert, then remembering to Google it or go to the website.

Twitter messages are the new elevator speeches. In ‘old school’ business, there was always the story that you had to be able to sell your business in the 30 seconds in takes a lift to go from the ground floor to the 30^th floor with a potential new client aboard. Now it’s can you sell your business in 140 characters?

Would you like to reach out to all the people who visited your site but did not convert into customers?

Combine Google’s Display Network with AdWords Remarketing functionality and not only is this possible but you can also be pretty intelligent in your approach.

Why Remarketing is good for business

Greater ROI through:

• More targeted ads – Target visitors based on their previous interactions with your site.
• Better click through rates – Users who have seen your site before are more likely to choose your ad from your competitors.
• Increased brand visibility – People who have been on your site will continue to see your ads as they surf sites within the content network.
• Greater conversion rates – Providing the offer is right we have found conversion rates to be up to 75% greater on these returning visitors.

How it could work for your business

There are many fantastic uses of Remarketing functionality which range from the basics such as marketing to people that came to your site but did not buy to more intelligent approaches like specific offers for types of clothing depending on what pages of your site they visited.

How you can set this up

The one that we find is best to start off with is to Remarket to your site visitors that did not convert into paying customers.

Before you start you will need to create your Remarketing lists. Your lists are populated by site visitors who reach pages with the remarketing tracking code installed.

Remarketing lists are created within the Audiences tab (above).

If you would like to Remarket to non converting site visitors you will need to create 3 lists.

1. A list including everybody that has visited your site.
2. A list of every person that converted into a customer (visited your thank you page).
3. A custom list that takes the 1^st list and removes everybody included in the 2^nd list.

Once you have clicked on the ‘Audiences’ tab you will need to click ‘Add audiences’ button.

Then click ‘Create and manage lists’.

Then click the ‘New audience’ button followed by ‘Remarketing list’.

You will then need to enter the details of your list including name, description, duration etc.

Once you have saved your Remarketing list it will be listed on this page with the tracking tag (code) next to it. You will need to insert this tracking code on the relevant pages like you would any other AdWords tracking.

You should follow these steps to create your first two lists which consist of all site visitors and all converting site visitors.

The third list you need to create is a combination list and can be created by clicking the ‘New audience’ tab.

You will see a page that looks like this:

When filled in it should look something like this:

Your finished list of audiences should look like this:

We advise you to setup a new campaign purely for Remarketing.

Make sure your Remarketing campaign settings are setup so that they only target the content network.

Set bids similar to your other content campaigns.

Setup an Ad group called “Site visitors who did not convert”.

After this has been setup you will need to navigate to the ‘Audiences’ tab and click ‘Add audiences’.

Find your custom combination list and click ‘Add’ and then ‘Save.

You just need to setup some attractive ads and you’re on your way.

What type of ads work best?

We recommend using image ads because these will give you the best chance of bringing visitors back to your site.

This is your second chance at converting the site visitor into a customer, so your message should be different than your standard ads. Provide additional selling points or try including discounts / incentives.

Make sure you include all the possible banner ad sizes to give your ads the best chance of showing up.

You could also try ads with slightly different messages to test which works best in terms of CTR and conversion.

Congratulations, you have now setup your first Remarketing campaign. Once your list has accumulated 500 visitors your ads will start to receive impressions.

Advanced Remarketing

If you follow the steps above you will have a fully functional Remarketing campaign that will get visitors back to your site, converting at a greater rate than ever before.

What next? … What can you do to take Remarketing to the next level?

You can create endless lists based on user interactions with your site and use this data to market to your users.

Possibly further uses of Remarketing:

• Cross-sell to visitors who have purchased particular items from your site.
• Remarket to visitors who abandoned during your shopping cart payment process with strong messages on trust/security/returns policy etc.
• Remarket to visitors who added particular products to their cart but didn’t complete the buying process.

Most people, I expect, will go here for the easiest way to get the code:

http://twitter.com/goodies/tweetbutton

Here, you can select:

• Layout
• Tweet Text (either the page title or something you decide on)
• URL to tweet (the page the URL is on, or one of your choice)
• Language
• Recommend people to follow

And once you have done this, you are presented with the code you should implement on your web page – however, this is static code that won’t work correctly if you place it within the WordPress blog post layout.

For example, the code for taking the page title and URL you are on looks like:

<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal" data-via="returnondigital">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

We found that placing this within each blog post in the index.php file means that when you visit, for example:

http://www.returnondigital.com/blog/

The Tweet now button within each post will actually tweet the above URL and page title “Digital Marketing Blog”.

Instead, the following iframe code can be used to get the permalink and correct page title:

<iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.html?url=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>&via=returnondigital&text=<?php the_title(); ?>&count=horizontal" style="width:110px;height:20px;"></iframe>

The only issue that remains, which was also apparent with Tweetmeme, is that it doesn’t archive too far back when viewing details of who has tweeted the page.  For example, it tells us that 5 people Tweeted our recent blog post:

21-07-10: Google Looking Pretty In Pink
http://www.returnondigital.com/blog/google-looking-pretty-in-pink

But when we click for more details, there are none:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.returnondigital.com%2Fblog%2Fgoogle-looking-pretty-in-pink

Other than that, it’s good to go.

We have recently noticed Google creating a new AdWords PPC ad slot between the three top level positions and the first organic placement (screenshot above).

Google are using this advertising space to promote their own credit card comparison service which could prove to be a worry for some of the big players in this market.

This effectively makes the number one organic link the 11th clickable link down the main section of the search results.

I think this will turn into a prime advertising slot given its position between the main PPC ads and the organic search results, but will Google keep this position for itself of will it start to offer it to advertisers? Only Google knows.