April 25, 2008

What I'm seeing in the world of marketing

Lots of chatter on the value and or effectiveness of advertising on social media. It all boils down to: Do eyeballs correlate with effective advertising. Just because there are a lot of eyeballs doesn't mean it will be easy to monetize them. Advertising is a stimulus - response world where paying attention is a necessary requirement. A visit to Facebook or even Beans & Brew isn't the same as perusing a magazine or watching The Office. Maybe a different marketing discipline will work better.
Some facts from Efficient Frontier on search costs -- overall Search clicks cost more than Content Network clicks; .65 to .32. And not surprisingly there are vertical differences. Finance is the most expensive vertical and it pays twice as much for a Search CPC as they do Content CPCs. For auto, the figures are just about equal.
The Brand Keys awards for engagement loyalty came out (http://www.brandkeys.com/awards/) with a lot of ties in various categories. This either means the market is fragmenting into smaller and smaller categories or commoditization is taking over. From Seana Mulcahy's OnlineSpin article:
- As quoted in today's Marketing Daily, Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys founder said, "Ties between brands used to be the exception, but there are more ties than there have ever been. This speaks to commoditization." He continued, "Many brands are now just placeholders. It's nice to be No. 1, but people don't perceive any differences between No. 1 and number two in many cases. People know the brand names, but they don't know what the brands stand for."
Chris Anderson of "Long Tail" fame is doing another book this year on the implication of doing business when everything has zero cost. My vote for subtitle was: FREE: How companies get rich by charging nothing
Following the classic trend of moving down market - Home Theaters and multi-room audio systems continue to find new markets and spur category growth. The high end (and Parks Associates defines that as averaging $36,000 in 2008) will be a $10 billion dollar industry in 2 years. A great opportunity for new brands.
Household Income seems to be a surrogate for explaining some of the reasons for online shopping according to Pew Internet Research. Convenience and time saving are positive statements higher income households agree with while lower income households are more likely to agree with the negatives - security of information and 'see before buy'. Complication and price aren't seen as major issues or differentiators.
iTunes is the second largest music retailer behind Wal-Mart. Best Buy and Amazon are 3rd and 4th. Overall sales, as measured by 'albums' decreased 10% probably because people don't buy as many singles to make up the 12-song standard.
Time shifting and commercial skipping are both rising according to Digital Life America. Owners of DVRs shift 25% of prime time viewing with 65% stating they "always skip" commercials.
Progress is being made on "WOM", "Engagement" and other new ways of thinking about the influence of marketing. The world will look like this: (and as the folks returning from adTech said, these are the skills people are paying dearly for. From Eric Peterson's blog)

Idea of the day -- use social media monitoring tools to identify posts of interest for your product then comment with a link to a related offer. Good conversion at a reasonable cost.