Bermel Interactive

The flood of news and information about marketing today is voluminous, making it challenging to
keep up and on top of everything. I do 3 things in an effort to stay abreast of what is going on:

Subscribe to weekly summaries to know what is happening in marketing. My two favorites are:

1) Mediapost has online roundup of daily news, and the ability to subscribe to specific topics such as search, email, video, gaming, metrics, social media.

2) Smartbrief provides succinct excerpts on a variety of industries. I subscribe to the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) Smart brief as well as Smartbrief on Social Media.

Read business books for a deeper understanding of new marketing approaches.

Do so with the following discipline: On the inside front cover, write a 1-line summary for each chapter. On the inside back cover, jot down the quoteable quotes you might want to use later with the page number on which they appeared. I can’t take credit for this as it comes from Tim Sanders, author of Love is the Killer App. It’s time consuming, but if, like me, you’re apt to remember something if you write it down, it’s very helpful. I haven’t read Crush It by entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, but that’s next on the list. (Click on the link only if you want to read a review.)

Attend online webinars to learn how to apply new marketing approaches. Aural learning is a nice break from reading, and there are a ton of online webinars available. If it’s social media you’re learning about, Awareness Networks has a terrific series featuring thought leaders in social media. Hubspot, another Boston-based company also offers a series of webinars including a program called Inbound University, a series of webinars that culminate in an Inbound Marketing designation for those who achieve the 75% minimum score. Read more…

By Mary Bermel

While search boasts a better reputation and social media marketing is the industry darling, the $8B worth of spent on display advertising in 2008 is hardly chump change. (In fact, how many bloggers are now happily collecting monthly paychecks thanks to profitable display campaigns running on their sites?) In 2008, 70% of ad spend went directly to web sites, 30% to ad networks. According to some, the split could be 50:50 in 2009.

Here’s a drastically simplified of overview of the evolution to ad networks.

Early days – approximately 1994 to 2000

Simple placements based on content relevance: Car ads on car sites. Ads oriented to the C-Suite on WSJ.com. Personal technology ads on tech-oriented sites like CNET.com

Pricing, though a fraction of offline CPMs, ranged in the mid-teens, though some niche sites command rates in the $100 CPM range before savvy media buyers negotiated healthy discounts.

As the web exploded, planning campaigns became unwieldy. Sure, the portals offer tremendous reach, but gee, smaller sites stood out, pitching and proving themselves with creative flexibility and helpfulness. The number of sites considered for a single campaign swelled. Agencies struggled to sort through and evaluate all the options, never mind deal with operational issues, and clients were sometimes bewildered by too much choice.

Enter the ad networks, connecting multiple sites – literally hundreds, in some cases – that want to sell ad space with advertisers and agencies. Their pool includes the long tail of sites, as well large branded websites who saw that representation would help them sell what their direct sellers had not. Ad networks structured their sites into logical vertical groups (tech, finance, auto, health) enabling advertisers to place their ads in contextually relevant places.

Today, ad networks while maligned by the WSJ, are a standard component of most media plans. Here’s why:

Advantages of ad networks:

Scale. Reach rivals the largest web properties. Ad network Specific Media claims 160 million U.S. consumers monthly across multiple vertical categories. Netshelter, a vertical ad network for tech has 20 million unique U.S. visitors, per ComScore.

Fraction of the price of the most prominent pages on leading web properties. Less than $1 CPM in some cases.

Flexible pricing models giving a pay-for-performance option via cost per lead, cost per action in addition to cost per thousand.

Technology leadership. Niche audiences can be reached in large numbers, thanks to technologies that segment audiences and allow marketers to target them e.g. Early Tech Adopters, Business Travellers, Women. This gives marketers the opportunity to deliver truly relevant ads to the most-likely-to-be-receptive consumer. It’s no longer a ‘spray and pray’ game.

Service. Ad networks have led the way in optimization, letting advertisers refine which ads run where.

Limitations typically associated with ad networks are starting to fade:

Disclosure. Some won’t tell advertisers where their ads are running. The best offer complete transparency. The exceptional let you exclude sites from your plan.

Quality. More and more networks do a better job screening sites on the network and selecting quality. Once all ad networks were considered ‘remnant’ inventory. Today many highlight key brands on their rosters. In fact, in Jan 09, the New York Times suggested as much as 50% of their ad space might be sold through networks.

Net, net, ad networks are here to stay, alongside a myriad of well known and much loved branded websites.

Next up: More on the size and choice among vertical ad networks like Netshelter for tech, Glam for women, Travel Ad Network for travel. Behavioral targeting. Optimization. Real time bidding. So much more to talk about.

When asked for examples of B2B successes in social media, an esteemed panel of the industry’s who’s who in social media seemed stumped, offering few examples. They were terrific, and it’s not that these folks aren’t working with a good number of top brands. It’s just that we are not yet at the point where social media marketing – heck, even interactive itself – is a well-established component of the marketing mix.

It seems to me that before panelists are comfortable rattling off a list of top B2B brands engaged in social media marketing, companies will need a concerted effort to achieve the paradigm shift. Based on my experience, the following is crucial:

- Executive support: Nothing says let’s do it like a tops-down mandate. When HP’s then CMO tied 3 of her 6 annual goals to interactive skills development, use of emerging media and metrics, it was a rallying cry to marketers throughout the company to learn, adopt and measure.

Getting execs on board requires a thoughtful approach. What’s the business case, the value in business terms, impact on the company? Sales upside? Cost savings? Improved employee morale? Customer loyalty?

Things that may help convince management of the merits of any new form of digital marketing include bringing in a peer-level expert for a 1:1 conversation giving execs a chance to learn and network at the same time. Share a top-ranked book or two on the subject gives people the chance to get a base of knowledge on his/her own. Above all, you can’t communicate consistently or often enough on progress, results, best practices.

Once management are passionate about change – at least supportive – it’s easier to get everyone else on board. Chances are, management will do all they can to promote change, so have a plan to make it happen and get support from management for that. It helps to do the following:

- Set clear goals: Tell employees what the end game is. Increase customer satisfaction ratings via direct channels to customers? Reduce support costs? Increase points of contact with customers directly? Direct feedback from customers? All the better if the goal is quantified. To shift advertising mix to online at HP, we suggested an aggressive goal leading all other tech marketers. We were blown away when the U.S. team exceeded the goal in less than 2 quarters.

- Offer opportunities to learn: A speaker series featuring vendors, industry pundits or internal experts should give employees the chance to increase their comfort, familiarity and knowledge with new forms of marketing. Plus it’s usually a good environment to ask questions. Depending on the culture, webinars might work just as well as face-to-face.

- Tie to performance: If you have quarterly MBOs, why not make one of them acquisition of digital marketing skills? If I recall correctly, IBM used to insist employees take 16 days of education each year, a sure way to grow knowledge and expertise. Having an organizational system support change is change management 101.

- Cheer on successes: If people are doing good work, highlight it, recognize it, applaud the effort and spread the word. Success breeds success.

Just a few of my thoughts. What do you think? What else has worked for you?