Marketing Archives - Page 16 of 37

Foursquare Rolling Out Post-Check-In Ads for Brands

AdAge reports that the beloved location-sharing service Foursquare is rolling out check-in ads (with Captain Morgan, in this case) that show up directly after you check in to a certain venue. Captain Morgan and Toys R Us are leading the way with their new ads:

Foursquare Rolls Out Check-In Ads With Captain Morgan | Digital – Advertising Age: “The new ads are also being used to help retailers or merchants lure consumers who check in outside of their locations. Toys R Us has started to use this capability by targeting people who check in at family-friendly locations such as parks, playgrounds and daycares. A June 19 post from website About Foursquare shows the author being served a 20% off, limited time use coupon for use a Toys R Us or Babies R Us after checking in at a public swimming pool.”

In the past, Foursquare has frequently had specials pop up after checking in to a restaurant and the various venues that show up when you launch the check-in menu oftentimes have ribbons indicating a special offer (like so):

For right now, this new ad option is huge for bigger brands and could be largely beneficial to small businesses in the future if Foursquare continues to develop and add to the program.

Whether you’re looking to get new customers to come to your venue based on a similar venue they’ve checked into or wanting to offer a coupon to existent customers who come in and check in via Foursquare, this new ad placement allows for both. While the targeting that Foursquare currently offers doesn’t go as deep (or creepy?) as that of Facebook, brands can still narrow down a solid demographic to display their ads to post-checkin.

I’ve loved Foursquare since I got my iPhone last year and have a few hundred check-ins there. It’s a great, clean service that allows me to keep a private (or public) journal of where I’ve been and when. I’ve even set up a Foursquare channel on IFTTT to grab my check-ins and a map image and post them privately to my own site. (Feel free to copy here).

If your business depends on walk-ins or local customers and you’re not on Foursquare, you’re missing out.

Go add your business or update your details if one of your customers has already added it on Foursquare.

Instagram Videos Get More Brand Engagement Than Vine

Interesting…

How does Instagram video stack up with Vine? | InsideFacebook: “Some findings, studied among the Interbrand 100 from June 20 to 26:

Instagram videos are being used by twice as many brands, and more videos are being posted.

Instagram videos are seeing significantly higher (over 2X) engagement than Instagram photos, suggesting brands should focus more time and energy on them.”

Instagram is the older company of the two, so brands were already familiar with the medium prior to its addition of video back in June. On top of that, Instagram gives users 15 seconds rather than Vine’s 6 which enables brands to create longer videos that push out bigger messages.

Instagram has a key advantage over Vine: it also has pictures. Instagram originated as a picture-sharing service which had a huge adoption rate, so it had a strong user base even before it launched video. Vine, on the other hand, originated as a pure video sharing service and had a niche user base which is hard to build on, especially when it comes to trying to get brands to use their platform.

In my own circles, I saw a very quick shift from Vine to Instagram when their video feature launched. There were lots of comments along the lines of “well, if Instagram has video now, why should I have an extra account on Vine? I’m already on Instagram.” Users (especially the prized 18-24 demographic which lots of brands market to) want a syndicated experience rather than having to jump from service to service just to get caught up.

These brands know that and have seen significantly bigger engagement from the audience on Instagram.

In simple words, Instagram tends to get better results and higher engagement for businesses looking to foray into the video space with their marketing campaigns.

Update Your Email Lists Before July 15

Shawn Collins has a good post this morning explaining why you need to update your mailing lists before July 15 since Yahoo! is cleaning out inactive email addresses by then:

Clear Old Yahoo Addresses Off Your Email Lists – Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins: “So you’ll either be mailing to dead addresses, which can impact your deliverability, or the new owners will start getting your newsletters, and will be upset that you are emailing them.

They will either unsubscribe or mark you as spam. The latter can negatively affect whether ISPs such as Gmail and Outlook accept your emails.”

More specifically, Yahoo! will be deleting any email accounts that have been inactive for 12 months or more. The folks at AWeber also have a good post outlining what you need to do to clean those addresses of your mailing lists:

Updated: Yahoo Releasing Email Addresses Monday, July 15: “You need to identify what email addresses on your list will be released. Search subscribers from Yahoo who haven’t opened an email from you in 12 months – but were added before that point (so you don’t unsubscribe recent subscribers who haven’t yet opened an email). Save them as a segment.”

Go update your mailing lists and make sure you’re not going to be sending email to the wrong people (in case some of those deleted accounts get claimed by new owners). Yahoo! has said they’re taking measures to unsubscribe accounts on the hit list, but there’s no way to make sure they catch everything.

We use MailChimp at Harrelson Agency, so here’s their post on how to clean up as well:

Yahoo Is Recycling Email Addresses | MailChimp Email Marketing Blog: “If you don’t perform regular list maintenance, let me suggest you start. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to segment out any inactive Yahoo addresses.”

MarketingTrends v2

It was time for a redesign:

» theme :mnmlist: “I developed a pretty minimalist WordPress theme for mnmlist.com, and I’d like to share it with my fellow bloggers.

This theme is offered for free, uncopyrighted, as is.”

As you can see, we changed the site theme, added a logo, and there’s a few more links in the nav bar up top (we’re also going to start a weekly newsletter on the fantastic MailChimp service soon).

Let us know if you see anything weird on the site. I’m still working on getting some older images to look right with the new theme and we’ll have commenting functionality back by next week.

If you’re not subscribed yet, go grab the RSS feed.

Thanks for reading 🙂

Devin

Content Is King In Marketing

Coca Cola’s marketing agency (evidently) has a magnificent video on their content strategy for the next 7 or so years:

It’s an in-depth look at what Coca-Cola wants to do to grow its content marketing strategies over the next couple of years and leverage the idea of storytelling via social media. Rather than try and dominate by doing everything themselves, CC also wants to use consumer stories to drive their brand success. The video also has some great examples of other companies that have done this successfully. Go watch the whole thing.

SixRevisions also has a great post about creating and maintaining good content now and in the future:

Content is All That Matters on the Web (SixRevisions.com): “Instead of aiming for a spectacular one-time-big-time viral success, it’s necessary to build a solid foundation and plan for the long haul. It can take months, even years, to develop an effective content strategy.”

Rather than try and create something yourself that will go “viral”, tap into existent spaces, memes, trends, etc for your own needs. Take advantage of what’s already on the web and build on it for the long haul rather than trying to aim to create something that will be relevant for x amount of time and then fade out. It’s not worth it and your business is more valuable than that.

Podcast: What Wakes You At 4 AM?

Sam gives a description of what it’s like (scary) to jump off the ledge (nail-biting) and start something new (exilerating) in this 25 minute podcast:

ThinkingDaily: When To Start Something New | Thinking.FM: “I’m scared.”

What wakes you up with fear and excitement at 4 AM?

Todd Crawford the Podcast

Todd Crawford joins Sam for 45 minutes of fascinating talk about domains, online marketing, mustard bbq and knives (and what exactly Impact Radius is doing today and in the next few years).

There’s a different performance marketing landscape in 2013 and Todd has a great vision of what might lie ahead for networks, advertisers, agencies and publishers.

Fascinating.

(Cross published with our Thinking.FM network and about 45 mins and change)

Why Content Is Important for Your Marketing

Whether you’re creating unique content or curating existing content into forms that your viewers/users/readers will find relevant, having some notion of a content development strategy is essential to doing successful business on the web going forward.

The PR World’s Play For Content Marketing Clout – Holmes Report: “I just cannot envision how any organisation cannot have a content-first approach to their communications, whether’s it’s for reputation management or marketing purposes,” states Perry. “Clients are attracted to some of the shiny object stuff – what’s far less sexy but more important is making sure your organization is oriented to a new way of doing business.”

Folks like Scott Jangro talk a great deal about content marketing (and curation) as a rapidly growing channel for marketers, advertisers and publishers to find solid footing in what can often feel like a topsy-turvy media landscape.

The real trick to understanding content marketing is that there is no one template for doing it right. Content marketing is a very subjective exercise and should be carefully planned (even if you’re doing spontaneous events or collecting and curating web media for your audience in a “real-time” manner).

As the interesting article above points out, content marketing is becoming essential across various channels of advertising from PR to branding and leaving this variable out of the equation will cost you in the long-term. It’s a major part of what we mean when we talk about discovery marketing.

Original link via Steve Rubel on Twitter

The Golden Gut Exists

Why Don Draper Shouldn’t Be Your Ad Guy – Forbes: “As appealing as Don Draper’s (and your in-house guru’s) perfect instincts are, they are indeed fiction. Even experts often fail to correctly predict which ad will perform better than other ads. Chris Goward, founder & CEO of WiderFunnel and author of You Should Test That notes, ‘In every presentation I give to marketers, I ask them to vote on which test variation won. Remember, these are the cream of the crop of digital marketers. In most cases, their gut intuition is wrong.”

I would disagree with this.

As would Steve Jobs… sometimes you get what you pay for and you get a passionate person who knows that if you asked enough people what they wanted in a car, you would have gotten “faster horses” as a response.

There’s room for testing but don’t forget the innovators and the crazy ones.

We love data and testing. But we love guts, intuition, the liberal arts and humanity even more.

“The people who think they are crazy enough to change the world are the ones that do.”