Digital Media - A Double Sided Blade

Hi guys. Let's have a talk about trends today. We have trends in fashion, music, news, climate, and almost everything we do. The current trend in marketing is of Digital & Social Media Marketing. Every company has an interest in this area and many are already investing heavily on this. And the number of additions are increasing daily.

Although there are many advantages such as low cost, ease of use, etc which were discussed in the earlier blogs, digital marketing is not smooth sailing all the way. One often forgets the main aspect of digital marketing. That is,

• It is open for every one freely.
• The customer dialogs are more important than the brand announcements.

Sometimes companies just start on digital marketing activities & get some one to post a picture or an update like every month, & call it digital marketing. It is digital. But it is calling for dissaster. This can be from many different ways.

For example this is a video that got very famous regarding United Airlines. While on a tour with the "Sons of Maxwell" band the musicians found out that the baggage handlers have rough handled the luggage so that one of their expensive guitars was broken. Even though they complained to various levels no action was taken to compensate them. And finally they produced this song and it become very popular and although it looks entertaining, the negative sentiment created would have been a nightmare for the Airline. This is how social media reacted to a bad customer service.

As explained in this blog by Jessica Farrelly the layoff of employees at HMV became a major issue. The reason behind was that the employee responsible for handling the corporate Twitter account also got fired. And the company had no idea who was doing what. He simply tweeted "We are tweeting live from HR where we're all being fired! Exiting !!" And this tweet started trending & created an instant uproar. Although the company sent a few tweets later to rectify the "Firing Everyone" image, the damage was already done. So you should always know who is handling your digital campaigns & check that they are up to the task.

This below video is what the outcome was of a prank video done by 2 Domino's Pizza employees  some time back. Although they insisted this was only a prank and no real harm was done, the posted video went viral & created waves of complaints. In the video they show to put the cheese used in the sandwiches in their nose, clean themselves with the material used to clean the kitchen equipment, sneeze on the food, etc. Both of them lost their jobs as a result and the company was under a lot of fire as well.

So it may be a simple prank, or a missed/delayed customer complaint, or even the access given to the wrong person. But the outcome can be devastating for the company. Digital media is not something one can control 100%. But regularly monitoring & moderating the customer dialogues is very very important in order to protect your company's reputation in such instances as explained above. 

Your comments are much appreciated.. :)

Use of Display Banner Ads in Sri Lanka

The modern world is a world based on Digital. The customers, companies, politicians, votes, terrorists, & every other kind is online today.

With this fact in mind many global companies have allocated a considerable amount of money for advertising on the web. This is done through Google Display Network. It is an easy access tool available for anyone to design and post their Banner Advertisements.

In a global scale many organization try to add something different to their banner ads, or target them so precisely that they do eventually get a better return from this investment. This is mainly because the effectiveness of simple banner ads are very low. When was the last time you clicked on a banner on a web site?

So what does Google Display Network do? Mainly it helps to develop & target advertisements on websites to create awareness, repeatedly remind the product and generate more sales. But all this depends on how and what you do as your campaign.

Re-targeting is a very useful tool provided by this system. What it does is, it observes consumer behavior through the websites they visit & once they visit a specific web site it drops a cookie on their machines. Then in future Google is able to display your advertisement on every website that person visits. This helps to constantly remind a potential customer with your product to create an actual sale.

Below shown is a part of the advertising space of a popular local website.

As you can see, although there are some colorful and attractive ads the whole space is cluttered and you will need a few minutes to separately understand the Ads even. But how many of you would spend time to separate Ads when you are not even looking at them.

This is the easier to do way of banner Ads. True it takes some skill to make the creative, but you can create an interesting banner Ad by being totally creative. Not just some attractive colors & modles.

Below is an amazing banner Ad campaign carried out by a Cruise Company. Watch the video & you will see the extent to which you can bend the reality to give a novel & memorable experience to users & create a lasting name for the company.

This is the level is should be. But we are still in the above mentioned basic stage. It doesn't take a genius to develop this. All it takes is the willingness to be creative & unique.

Hope to see us developed to this level in near future. Do share your thoughts.

Power of Video - Power of Youtube

In media there are several forms such as print, Radio, TV, Digital & each of them are able to deliver one or more forms as images, sound, video. But today Digital has been able to deliver all these forms including word of mouth.

Many of you would simply search online for any of the day to day information requirement. Most are used to resorting to sites such as Wikipedia. But still the fact remains that we like to watch a video much more than we prefer to read an article. The sounds, colors, motions combined give a very unique and memorable experience. Therefore we retain more memories in this format as well. Most of you may not remember the date Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. But everyone of you will remember that video, the saying "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind".

So you can see the power of this combined media against others.

Youtube is very popular among the web communities today. There are many who depend on Youtube for daily news and updates around the world. There are various companies and people who became world renowned purely through Youtube. A very good example would be Psy and his Gangnam style video.

But the most popular videos are not only expensive music videos and commercials. As you can see there are many kinds of videos in the top list.

Home movies, amateur videography has a raw entertainment that can not be expresses in any other kind of format. In Youtube you can see the videos of mistakes become hits. A single persons words changing entire nations.

Many companies today have identified this power and are correctly utilizing this facility. What you need to understand is that Youtube is a free service and with just a camera phone and an internet connection one person can change the world of billions.

Below are some popular and successful Youtube video campaigns done by several organizations.

True that there is a very strong & long thought process behind these campaigns. But these are not done by spending millions & the effect it creates is worth much much more than that.

Below is a campaign done by Google & this shows the power of search in a very nice way that would normally take pages to write.

The following is a video you all may remember. It created great consumer interest with its innovation & simplisity.

Although these are campaigns done by various companies, you don't need that to make a popular video. All you need is a good idea and the innovativeness.  Youtube is a place where popularity depends on what you do & not how much you spend. This is a great tool for small organizations to create awareness as well as for large organizations to be innovative.

Here is a small video taken by an individual that went viral.

 

Do share your views on Youtube. Thanks. :)

Facebook Advertising for Effective Targeting

Hi again guys. Lets have a look at Facebook & Facebook Advertising today.

When it comes to social media, Facebook is among the top names that pop to our mind. Millions of people use Facebook to connect & interact with their friends all over the world on a daily basis. As marketers we see this as access to a wide market with better communications. You may have seen that many organizations & brands, big or small have a presence in Facebook.

If you take a Facebook page of a company, their are 3 important items. They are,

• Content - The pictures, statuses, company information, etc. you share on your page to interest your fans.
• Applications - The various applications that are used to encourage fans to engage with the page.
• Sponsored Ads - Advertising the page & the brand through Facebook.

Content plays a major role in this. If the page does not have good & valued content, the mere number of likes or paid advertisements will be of very little use. You must plan ahead as to what content & what categories you will upload & when you will do so. Also you should identify what you will avoid from sharing on your page.

As for an example we have created a Facebook page for the local business of Salon LIYO in order to promote their business & create a loyal fan base.

Today we see many pages promote some kind of a promotion on & off. This is most of the time a contest. It is important to identify "do we need to do a contest just because everyone is doing so?". There are several things you need to know before you embark on a promotional activity on your Facebook page. Also you should go through the terms & conditions of Facebook well too. For example according to Facebook guidelines (https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php) you should not promote to like a picture on your page as the competition.

Facebook Ads

It is said that usually the reach of a page post on Facebook is below 20% of the total fan base. But with a proper advertising campaign you can almost triple this reach.

There are basically two types of Ads on Facebook. One is the small advertisements that come up on the right hand side bar of the browser when you are in Facebook. The other is the sponsored stories that come in the news feed in your home page. This happens mainly when your friends like the sponsored pages or share their content.

To create a Facebook Ad, you can go to facebook.com/ads & select create an Ad. You can promote either an external website URL, a Facebook page or an Facebbo App through the advertisement.

There are several objectives you can achieve through these Ads. You can use the Facebook Ads to Gain more likes to your page, get more clicks or impressions. Or to promote a specific post. So you need to select your objective well for better results from your Ads.

 

And now you can design your Ad. You can add a picture to increase the attractiveness of your Ad. And also you can select the sponsored stories option alongside your Ads. This is provided free of charge by Facebook.

Then you need to define your target audience. This is very important. Facebook allows you to define the target audience based on country, city, age, gender, and even the relationship status. The below given picture will give you an understanding about this. For example for a small gents clothing store in a small geographic area, they can ensure that their Ad will only be displayed to the males with in the age category and in the immediate vicinity of the store. This will help to gain more fruitful results from the Ad cost spent.

 

Also we can ensure the Ad will not be displayed to those who have already liked our page etc. This helps to reduce the wastage of money talking to the same person again & again.

Now you can set the budget for your Ads. You can allow Facebook to bid by just setting a daily budget limit or you can bid yourself for greater results.This will help you to keep track of your Ad cost and to ensure you do not exceed your limit.

So you can see that Facebook Ads can be customized to be more targeted to the specific needs & characteristics of the individual viewer (for example you can design separate Ads for males & females who are single, in a relationship, married, divorced and target those properly & get much better results at a very low cost) & this will help to extract sales from small niches in the market.

Hope this was of some use to you. Do leave a comment.