Connected Advertising Blog

Social  media is about sharing life in snippets. On the way down to a football tournament with my son, I was taking video and pictures to send back to my wife. While I could not share a great deal of detail, I was able to piece together enough snippets to give her a sense of the place and what is going on there. She could then imagine the rest.

When I read status on facebook or follow a string of tweets, I get snippets of my friends’ lives. I realized with this experience, that for most, I know little about the rest of their lives. For a few, I know enough to fill in the blanks.

Is that good enough? Are we comfortable diluting our relationships down to those snippets that can fit into a 30 sec video, or 140 character tweet, of a facebook update?

This is at once a personal question and a broader social question. I enjoy seeing what old high school classmates are up to. But sometimes, they post things that clearly show that they are simultaneously connected with me ( a long time unseen person), and (I hope) close knit friends. I have little to no context for the status, while others can fill in the blanks.

I believe snippets are a great way to reconnect across the distances of time and geography. But, we need to take care not to allow them to increase the distances between us. Status updates are not the same as conversations. Video and pictures are not the same as shared experiences. Social networks are not the same as social life. When your friends send you a snippet of their life, do you have the context to fill in the blanks?

According to Vovici, Customer Experience Management (CEM)  is seen as the number one Differentiator among business leaders.

When asked about greater consistency at every customer touch point, only 36% believe this area of the customer engagement is benefiting their organizations.

From an online marketing perspective,  consistency is a critical factor. It is impacted by what we say, how we say it, and how we manage it. One of the things I have emphasized with my online teams is that “experience needs to meet expectations.” If they don’t, you wasted the spend, and much more importantly, you may have permanently lost your customer.

If consumers click on a search ad about a specific type of shoe, and the landing page is about clothing in general, we blew it. If they click on an ad about a certain model car, and they hit the OEM home page, we blew it.

Managing the customer experience starts with the first touch point.

Open Call Access

It amazes me to see how quickly forward looking companies like Google resort to backward looking  defenses to avoid regulation. By trying to pretend that regulations should be applied as if technology and business models of today were more like those of 1980, Google is trying to avoid being governed by the same rules as other companies providing telecom service.

Common Carrier Laws provide for open access and are in place to ensure that providers of services (telephone in this case), allow consumers unfettered use at a reasonable rate. AT&T is using this law to petition the FCC to make Google open it’s Google Voice service, allowing users to call all numbers. Currently, Google blocks the calling of some numbers based on local carrier charges (in those areas) to Google. Their justification is not unreasonable on the surface. You can see their post here.
In part…

“Google Voice’s goal is to provide consumers with free or low-cost access to as many advanced communications features as possible. In order to do this, Google Voice does restrict certain outbound calls from our Web platform to these high-priced destinations. But despite AT&T’s efforts to blur the distinctions between Google Voice and traditional phone service, there are many significant differences:
•    Unlike traditional carriers, Google Voice is a free, Web-based software application, and so not subject to common carrier laws.
•    Google Voice is not intended to be a replacement for traditional phone service — in fact, you need an existing land or wireless line in order to use it. Importantly, users are still able to make outbound calls on any other phone device.
•    Google Voice is currently invitation-only, serving a limited number of users.”

ATT is arguing that Google should be forced to behave like a carrier based on Common Carrier laws.

“whether a carrier is a common carrier . . . does not depend upon whether its charter declares it to be such . . . but upon what it does.” US v. Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal, 249 US 296 (1919).

While the distinction Google makes may seem appropriate, I only have to look back over the past year to see the impact of parsing words rather than recognizing intent.

In the financial service markets, one of the common paths around regulation was the ability to declare a company as one form of institution and being subject to the regulations thereof, while conducting activities that are clearly that of a different industry, and avoiding those regulations. As President Obama rightly stated, we need to regulated activities regardless of the companies by which they are conducted.

If you want to provide phone service, you should be regulated by the same rules as any telecom. While Google is providing this service “Free” and to a “limited number of users,” we cannot view this for the short term. As they further said, “Google Voice’s goal is to provide consumers with free or low-cost access to as many advanced communications features as possible.” This implies growth in the intended offerings. I would further argue that, since Google is a for profit firm, “free” is not the same as unprofitable (at least in theory). The Google model is to create services which increase its audience, thereby also increase its value to advertisers. The mode of monetizing the service should not be the measure of the applied regulation, the service itself is the subject.

The rules are for the services provided, not the type of company providing them. I hope we can transfer knowledge gained in the financial services mess to other areas of our regulation.

It is also a shame when companies that show such vision in the development of unique business models and application of technology fall back on the same old-company legal tactics.

AT&T’s prompting has moved lawmakers and the FCC to take some steps in this debate.

To me, social media is an important part of consumer communications. But, with all things new, we need to avoid getting caught up in the hype. If we are focused on those who use social media, then we obviously need to base our decisions on what we know about them from our experiences and research. Where I have a concern is when we make broad, market wide strategic statements based on research that applies to a specific tactic (such as social). As we dive deeper into these specific tactics, particularly hot ones, we run the risk of magnifying research numbers beyond their true size and implication.

A recent release from Nielsen, if not read carefully, can create just such a scenario. In part, it reads…

…  “search” as the dominant form of Internet navigation or, how we get to where we we’re going on the web. However, as with most forms of evolution, change is constant, and over the past two years search navigation has appeared to shift to social media…

and

We continue to see that social media has not only changed the way consumers communicate and gather on the Web, but also impacted content discovery and navigation in a big way.

These are two very broad statements. Taken at face value, one might assume that we should shift a large share of resources away from search (for example) and into Social media.

[Nielsen divided respondents into three groups: Searchers (37%), Portalists (34%) and Socializers (18%).]

User Content usage

A more accurate depiction of the data would be to state that,  for Socializers  15% said that blogs are a trusted source of information online. Or,  Socializers ( 18%) who think blogs are a trusted sources (15% of the 18%) make up 2.7% of those surveyed.

To be fair, blogs were also sited as trusted sources of information for about 9% of Portalist and 6% of Searchers, or a about of 8% of those surveyed.

Taking a look at the survey graphs, you can see that the number for “facebook or Twitter” as trusted sources is even lower… among all groups.

Okay, enough with the percentages of percentages, the bottom line is read the detail of any survey, research or statement… about any media.

My final take on this is about the methodology. The survey method is a fine, valid way to get input from consumers or users. However, two points: First, the results that were quantified are based on the source the users “started” with. It does not speak to the overlap of sources used. So, even among those 18% that are heavy Socializers, there is nothing in the stated research results to suggest that they are not using other sources. Often, there is overlap between primary and secondary source usage, but there is nothing here to let us know either way. Second, be leery of self reported behavior. Again, not invalid, but needs to be backed by other data (observed). A good, recent perspective from Vovici.

I am not knocking social media. I believe in it as a way to keep up with the general perceptions of consumers, a way to provide feedback and develop more meaningful contact points. But, marketers need to engage social with their eyes wide open. Look at all numbers from a critical perspective.

Mike Volpe had a great post on Social media marketing lead gen. What he did, and more importantly, what he produced. Now, we all have different challenges when it comes to how we can use social media. There may be some very direct actions you can take. But, if you get nothing else out of his piece, remember and live this quote:

Social media marketing is not a campaign, it is a marketing lifestyle

Market Share report from Net Appliance is being quoted as showing google getting eighty percent of the search share.

However, before anyone starts quoting these things, they should be aware of the methodology.

The first skew is that the measurement is not of search, but of visitors to specific sites that happen to deploy NetApps tools. Knowing nothing substantive about these site, we cannot assume the visitors are truly representative of the search engine users.

Additionally, how the sites market themselves also makes a difference. With 76% actively marketing in PPC, the strategies they employ have a great influence on the profile of the searchers.

Additional estimates about the website population:

76% participate in pay per click programs to drive traffic to their sites.

43% are commerce sites

18% are corporate sites

10% are content sites

29% classify themselves as other (includes gov, org, search engine marketers etc..)

Nothing NetApps is doing is wrong. My concern is with media outlets that cover them without, at the very least, articulating the methodology of the data gathering.

InformationWeek quoted the results. Then, PCWorld sited InformationWeek. InformationWeek also quoted another share measurement report that was based on a similar type of set up. However, this company kept talking about “hits.” Not sure, but in our area, hits as we define them (every element on a rendered page is a ‘hit’) has no real meaning. Perhaps it does, but without clarification, we cannot assume so.

Finally, Danny Sullivan pointed out several years ago at SEW (sorry, I couldn’t find the link), search share shifts are not terribly important until they demonstrate a clear trend that also crosses a threshold. So, seeing Google move from the 40-50% share range to the 50-60% range share and then 60%+ share, this is meaningful.  A -0.2% move in share (Bing) is not only insignificant, it is not worthy of space in any column…Unless the headline reads, “FLASH… nothing’s changed”.

After announcing an extension of the ebay venture earlier this month, GM is calling off the deal according to the Wall Street Journal.

While shopping online is a great way for consumers to education themselves, and businesses to provide valuable information, it is important to keep the distinction between shopping and buying in mind.  There is a reason brick & mortar businesses continue to see the bulk of the buying… particularly for more involved purchases.

There are some things that the web can turn into commodities, and be a primary driver of sales. However, buying is not just about the “goods,” it is about the experience, the trust, and the belief that the person with whom you are doing business will back up their end of the deal. When you are talking about something as personal as an automobile, commodity transactions just aren’t in the mix. Franchisees, dealers, and local stores are the face of the company. GM’s experience is just one more reminder of this.

In case you have any doubt about just how personal this can get, consider this article in MediaPost. …

64% of pickup truck owners feel their truck is an extension of their personality… 40% have nicknames for their trucks.

Peering into the brain to figure out what triggers specific reactions and how to motivate consumers to buy is part of the Neuromarketing practice that is being explored today.

I like to read Seth Godin’s blog… it makes me think.

This is an easy putt:

I have always promoted the idea that search marketers have to step beyond search to see what is really going in with their company or clients. To really add value, you have to know where you fit in, what obstacles you might face and what you might offer beyond the obvious. Sometimes, even often, the obstacles have nothing to do with the game of search. Take another look at that easy put… from a broader perspective. 

  

Kind of makes you rethink it, doesn’t it? If you are only focusing on your narrow area, are there dangers, threats, or perhaps opportunities that you are missing?