While it’s not a new concept to treat individuals with ability to influence others as special–think about all the freebies celebrities get–it is an area being increasingly viewed as important to marketing.  What IS new, however, is that the Internet changed who can become one and how quickly.

There are individuals who are influential whether they are on or off ‘the grid’, such as analysts, journalists and standards/buyers groups, those who choose to become influential in a particular area, such as bloggers and columnists, and those who accidentally become influential by posting something, perhaps a video, that resonates with people and becomes popular.  It may not even be a person.  Clark Griswold the dog (who happens to be a male version of my Bella!) was an overnight sensation and is now influencing people to buy all kinds of products…which is another marketing lesson: helping people to have fun can increase your ROI.

Here are 10 tips for your influencer marketing campaign, per Influencers in this category (numbers correspond to quoted sources at bottom):

1. Treat everyone as important. Not everyone is an Influencer in your area of business, but if you treat everyone with the respect that they could be that’s always the best way. That one time you don’t respect someone as a potential Influencer you will inevitably wind up looking the fool. “Personally I would like to see brands realize every Customer can be an influencer and treat them in a way the builds them as advocates.”  While it’s normal to give Influencers preferential treatment, just be careful not to alienate customers who perhaps aren’t as influential (for now!).
2. Follow the content and get personal. “To become a Influence is the byproduct of continually producing high quality content.  Maximize human contact where possible – meeting for coffee or talking on the phone will form a much stronger bond between you, your brand and the potential influencer.”
3. Don’t forget the ‘little guys’. “While it’s relatively straightforward to manually identify the top-level “mass influencers” — such as journalists, celebrities or academics — the far larger number of ‘micro influencers’ has remained elusive. These micro influencers may not have a formal position that validates their influence, but they can be recognized among large audiences as being knowledgeable and trustworthy on specific topics. They also generate up to three times more word of mouth communications than non-influencers. Therefore, these micro influencers have a huge potential to drive purchase decisions and product contagion.”
4. Build a panel of vocal brand advocates or simply hire them.  Influencer marketing is “simply an extension of traditional word-of-mouth. We find that recommendations from ‘people you know’ are extremely important.  These advocates turn other consumers into advocates.”… “The Brand Ambassador hired by Company K was a nationally recognized authority figure in the category. His credibility enabled Company K to add more Brand Ambassadors at virtually no additional cost to increase the scope of the program.”
5. Sell to other companies how to connect with your “growing list of passionate individuals who are actively sought by their social group for recommendations.”
6. Track who’s writing about you and who could be. “Leverage social media [to] find people who are willing to review your product, spreading the word about your brand. These people are Influencers, and if you can access them, you’ll connect with the 82 percent of people who are influenced by the reviews they read online.”
7. Use Google+ circles to your advantage.  Something to do with Google+ that is different than what you’re already doing on other social networks!  “Customize different content to different groups…give [your] best content or news away to [your] most engaged or high value members.”  “Consumers could tell the brand what type of content they want, and the brand would create circles and share content accordingly.”
8. Influence and reach are not the same thing.  Another way of saying it: “It’s important to note the difference between credibility and fame.  Influence generate[s] both feeling and action on the part of your consumer base.”  As my high school Spanish teacher used to say, “Escuche y repita!” (“Listen and repeat!” I can’t believe I still remember that): reach is not the same as influence, but influence comes out of reach.
9. Target trade channels.  This is a stealthy way of infiltrating and overtaking markets.  “Company R targeted Trade Channels where the majority of the selling activity was very subtle and took place almost entirely after normal business hours. This made it nearly impossible for a Company B representative to encounter a Company R Brand Ambassador at work.”
10. Keep it focused.  “The program was limited to a single venue that was heavily visited by the targeted consumer group. This significantly increased adoption while keeping costs low.” … “The program was limited to a modest but very passionate consumer group that influenced the category. This significantly increased likelihood of adoption by a larger group while keeping costs low.”

One of the greatest challenges is identifying and targeting influencers in an effective manner.  To that end, I have made it my goal to scope out, use and review influencer marketing tools to help both of us achieve our goals.  The first in this coming series is available now, Manage Influencer Marketing with BuzzStream, on my second blog, BYOB.net, a hand-curated resource of products and services to help you Build Your Own Business.

Happy marketing ROI hunting!

1. Hosni Mubarak was an Influencer! By Frank Eliason
2. Marketers: How To Get Noticed by “Influencers” by Joe Chernov
3. The new marketing model: Peer index marketing By Azeem Azhar
4. P&G’s Panel of Women Helps Amplify Word-of-Mouth Marketing by Chris Laird / Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 4
5. InkFluence – Hidden Influencers
6. Does Word Of Mouth Marketing Work Better On Social Media? by Lauren Dugan
7. The Social Layer: Six Thoughts On Where Google Plus Is Going by David Armano / How I’m Using Google+ (Hint: It’s About Relevance) by Melissa Parrish
8. Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 1
9. Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 2
10. Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 3 / Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 4

Here’s the gist of the article: for two of GM’s automotive brands, GMC and Buick, consumers can now go to their website and utilize a vehicle-configuration tool, and then post the custom car from the tool to their Facebook page to solicit feedback from friends.  In addition to seeing responses from friends on Facebook, consumers also can see them in the configuration tool.  GM will be in essence spying on this activity to see what configurations are “liked” by consumers and their friends, and then “will also be able to tie those metrics to purchases.”

I’m curious HOW they plan to tie those metrics to purchases, as they then go on to say they they do NOT “have mechanisms in place to remarket to consumers who build and share a vehicle, other than messaging to those who “like” the brands’ Facebook pages.”  At least GM acknowledges that “likes” on a Facebook page or playing around with a configuration tool are not ROI:

“The ultimate gold standard is to be able to connect how people are engaging on GMC.com and with the tool and ultimately be able to lead that into sales and how this tool helps to facilitate sales at the bottom line.”

Since GM doesn’t tell us how they’re doing it, we can only speculate.  What we do know is that GM obtains permission to access consumers’ basic profile when the user connect their vehicle design with their Facebook account, and GM may use some of this information shared publicly to tailor future marketing communications.  As an exercise I want to think thorough examples of how ROI can be measured in this situation.  I will further break it down into soft ROI and hard ROI, as well as what metrics I’m certain GM can access and what is my speculation (noted by asterisk).

Soft ROI

• # of “likes” on the brand pages
• # of consumers who use the auto configuration tool on the websites
• # of consumers who share their custom car design with their Facebook friends
• # of Facebook friends who “click,” “like” and “comment” on the custom car designs
• # of Facebook friends who “pass-along” the content from one person to another*
• # of variations of car designs
• # of likes per variation (qualitative “comments”can also be coded)
• segmentation of most liked car designs based on other gathered information (e.g. male/female, age ranges, geography)
• # of configuration tool visits and duration of engagement
• source of traffic, other pages visited and in what order
• whether the brands/the promotion are being talked about online (e.g. tweets, blogs, press)
• whether the brands are being talked about more than competitive brands
• # of consumers who visit a dealer month over prior month, year over prior year
• # of consumers who use the configuration tool who own a GM car currently*
• # of consumers who submit or call for more information on their dream car*

Hard ROI aka the “Gold Standard”

• # of consumers who visit a dealer and show a copy of their dream car or mention the tool*
• # of consumers who already pretty much know what they want, due to the tool, saving agent’s time*
• # of consumers who redeem coupons/offer codes*
• # of buyers who respond in a follow-up survey that the tool had a significant bearing on their purchase*

In summary, there are certainly a lot of opportunities to measure the soft ROI of social media marketing integration and, while more challenging to link these activities to hard ROI — money earned or resources saved — it’s not impossible.  If you have any thoughts of your own to fill out these lists, I’d love to hear them!

In summary of the article, an individual in the Avis customer loyalty program (lesson #1) hadn’t used their services in awhile but thought they might again for a personal trip, so they logged into the Avis site (lesson #2) to review their options, only to abandon the effort for another day.  A few days later, the person received a postcard from Avis that said their email bounced (lesson #3) and if they logged back in and updated their email address (lesson #4) they would get a free upgrade (lesson #5).  This multi-channel marketing effort converted the browser into a buyer; not only due to the free upgrade but because they were so impressed with the effort.  And then, they happened to work for marketing news site MediaPost and wrote about their experience (lesson #6).  Lastly, now here I am writing about that person’s experience (lesson #7).

Avis knew that having a clean database of email addresses is the most effective way to market to their lapsed customers, and also that direct mail still has its advantages.  As much of marketing has switched to email, postcards stand out more now.  Avis leveraged a predetermined process where an abandoned transaction triggers the next steps of a reminder email and, if that fails, a postcard to the last known mailing address, both with an offer to close the deal.  All this can not be done, of course, if customers are not first enrolled in a program to identify that person and their activity on the site.  What Avis was unaware of in their establishing this multi-step process is the resulting loyalty it would create, as well as the press they would receive from it.

Other companies would do well to follow Avis’ lead and think through where their customers may abandon a purchase in the buying cycle, what offer could encourage them to follow through, and how exactly to administer that offer.  If there are many reasons and points where an abandoned shopping cart could take place, and if there is no way to, or reasons for, a customer to enroll in a loyalty program, I recommend the company should survey its customers and prospects to map the buying process out and determine the best offer to cinch the deal.  Understanding all the opportunities for customer touches, having multi-step processes in place, and knowing what concessions may be offered to encourage the purchase, is key to success.

Happy ROI hunting!

On a personal note: I’m bacccckkkkk….from my blogging hiatus.  Sometimes one has to turn inward for a bit in order to once again turn outward…a marketing lesson in and of itself!

Easy Embed of Video in WordPress

I found that managing video in pages and posts a bit of a challenge until I found a plugin called Smart YouTube.  Although it has “YouTube” in the name, it works for all kinds of hosted video.  Download the zip file, extract it into a folder on your hard drive, then upload it into your plug-ins directory (/wp-content/plugins/).  In WordPress, go to Plugins and activate it.

Under Settings in your left column, click on Smart YouTube.  Select “Display videos in posts.”  Make any other adjustments you would like to appearance such as width and height, or leave the defaults, click Save.  All you have to do now is take the link from the YouTube or other hosted video, open the page or post, click on the HTML tab, paste the URL where you want it, then change http:// to httpv:// (notice the ‘v’ character).  That’s it!

Add a Print-Friendly Page Icon

You may want to give people the option to print the screen without sidebars, in which case the WP-Print plugin is for you.  Once again, download, extract, upload and activate the plugin.  Under Settings in your left column, click on Print.  Make any adjustments to the text you want shown, which printer icon you want (they give you two to choose from), click Save.  When you want to add it to a page or post, select the HTML tab and paste [print_link] wherever you want it to show up.  That’s it!

One thing I did see and adjust: when the print page is displayed it has the title, the author, the date, and then some things I didn’t want, like Category.  I opened print-posts.php and on lines 46 and 47 is where it tells what to display.  I removed everything after the author, line 47, so now it looks like this:

<p id=”BlogDate”><?php _e(‘Posted By’, ‘wp-print’); ?> <u><?php the_author(); ?></u>

Add the New Facebook Like Button

I tried a few different Facebook Like button add-ons and felt this one the best.  Once you activate it in the plugins folder, it creates its own drop-down for settings in your left column.  You then adjust whether you want it on pages, posts or both; before or after content, or both, and other settings for appearance you can play with.

Post Simultaneously to Facebook, Myspace and Twitter

Lastly, a really neat plugin called Status Updater allows you to integrate your Facebook profile or business page, Myspace profile, and Twitter profile.  Once activated, under Settings go to Status Updater.

• For Facebook, enter your login credentials,  your Facebook page URL in addition to or instead of your personal profile, and select if you want it to update your Status (at top of your page) and/or provide as a link (with title, summary and picture).
• For Myspace, enter your login credentials and your “mood.”
• For Twitter, you can change how it displays under “Default status template” (e.g. “New blog post: %POST-TITLE% %POST-URL% #marketingroi).   Enter your link shortener credentials if you want to use that also.

Lastly, be sure to enter your email address under “Log email” or you can’t save.  This is to notify you when something goes out.

First, you should know that Thesis introduces a new concept called “Hooks,” which really should have been called “Placements” as they tell the site where to “place” changes that you make.  Also you should know you will only edit two documents, which are in your Custom folder (/wp-content/themes/thesis_17/custom/).  Download these files and edit them with a program such as Crimson Editor.

• Functions which is really “custom_functions.php”
• CSS which is really “custom.css”

Functions are code that tell Thesis what you want it to do.  CSS allows you to make style changes to the whole site at one time.  They often work together when making changes.

The good part of this method:  changes you make will not be overwritten when Thesis updates the core system.  The bad part: it’s confusing.  I have picked up a bit of PHP by tinkering with WordPress in the past, but not enough to write my own code.  Mostly I just search online for what I’m trying to do and pick up code that others have written, test it, and see what works.  Even with my method, it is good to still learn some of what you’re doing.

A good place to start in understanding Hooks is with this tutorial.  In essence, Hooks run whatever “functions” you tell them to run, and these are placed in the Functions file.  There are two “actions” you can do to functions: “add” and “remove.”  They look like this:

add_action(‘hook_name’, ‘your_custom_function’);
remove_action(‘hook_name’, ‘your_custom_function’);

To make it even more exciting, Thesis has already added a bunch of default Hooks in order to create the default template.  If you really want to “geek out” you can see the default hooks in Launch.php (wp-content/themes/thesis_17/lib/functions/).

Moving Your Navigation Menu Below the Header Area

Sometimes you need to “remove” something they’ve already done and then “add” what you want it to do.  An example:

By default, your Navigation Menu appears above your Header, containing your site’s Title and Tagline (note the indents below to see what Hooks ‘contain’ other Hooks).   I’m not sure why they did this as I know few websites where you want that to happen…maybe it’s to force you to start learning this stuff?  If you look at this helpful web page, it shows you a diagram of what the Hooks are named and where they are on the Home page.  Here is the same helpful web page with descriptions added to assist you to understand the placements.  You will see what looks like this at the top:

In order to move the Navigation Menu below the Header you want to paste the below in your Functions file:

//move nav menu
remove_action(‘thesis_hook_before_header’, ‘thesis_nav_menu’);
add_action(‘thesis_hook_after_header’, ‘thesis_nav_menu’);

So what does this mean?

• When you put // before a line of code, it says ‘ignore these instructions to self’.
  • Also, it is proper “geek-speak” when there are multiple lines of notes-to-self to write it like this: /* text */
• Remove the default action that places the navigation menu in the Hook (position) ‘thesis_hook_before_header’
• Add an action that places the navigation menu in the Hook (position) ‘thesis_hook_after_header’

Replace Your Title and Tagline with a Clickable Image Header

Now to get rid of the Title and Tagline, and include them instead in an image file that becomes a Click-to-Home Header.  For this, you want to first design the Header…but how wide to make it?  That depends on what column layout you’ve used and how wide you made the columns.  Use this handy chart to decide the width of your Header image.  Then, place the below into your CSS file:

/* This line sets up our clickable background image based on the site title’s link */
.custom #header #logo a { display: block; height: 100px; width: 817px; background: url(‘http://www.yoursite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis_17/custom/images/yourimagefile.jpg’) no-repeat; outline: none; }
/* This line gets rid of the site title & tagline by casting them out to far left field */
.custom #header #logo, .custom #header #tagline { text-indent: -9999px; }
/* This line collapses the vertical space of the tagline so that there isn’t unnecessary white space after the header image */
.custom #header #tagline { height: 0; }
/* This line removes the padding from the header so that the background image sits close to the nav menu, the bottom border of the header, and the sides of the content */
.custom #header { padding: 0; }

So what does this mean?

• Place your image file into the folder /custom/images/ and then adjust the height and width attributes to reflect the actual size of your image.  Then change the URL of your image to reflect the actual file name.
• We don’t want to use the editable Title & Tagline fields, so we’re throwing them off into the left side of the page where no one will see them.
• Since we’re not using the Tagline, we’re collapsing extra white space after the Header image.
• We’re then removing padding from the Header so it fits tight next to the background, content and nav menu.

Replace the Functions and CSS Files on Your Server

Lastly, upload the Functions and CSS files into your Custom folder.  Use an FTP program such as the Filezilla Client.  You can obtain your FTP settings from your hosting provider.  You should see your clickable Header just above the navigation menu.

You may be thinking about building a new website and are unsure which way to proceed.  Although WordPress (installed to a domain – not WordPress.com) is a very functional website platform, it is only as good as the theme installed on top of it.   So why did we go with Thesis?

1. We want to allow multiple people to update the site, which WordPress does
2. The Thesis theme came recommended as the one behind ChrisBrogan.com, a very popular marketing website
3. It allows much more customization than other themes I’ve worked with and is only $87

Once you’ve installed WordPress to your domain – most hosting providers including mine, Dreamhost, offer an easy one-click install option -  upload the Thesis Theme using an FTP program such as Filezilla into your /wp-content/themes/ folder and follow the instructions how to activate it.  The next challenge is the uphill climb learning how to use it, so read this goldmine of tips to save some time!

How to Setup New Pages in WordPress

Likely the first thing you will want to do is layout the pages you want in the navigation menu (across the top), so let’s start there.  Although WordPress is a blogging platform, you don’t have to want to use the blog capabilities to create your website.  On the other hand, WordPress only allows you to add new blog posts to one page – the ‘posts page’ – and the default for this is the Home page, although that can change. I haven’t yet  figured out a way to allow posts for more than one page, but will update here if I do.

• Under Pages>Add New create the pages in the nav menu but don’t fill them in yet.
  • You can turn off the default displayed sidebar(s) when creating a page under Attributes>Template>No Sidebars.
  • You can also turn off, on individual pages, Allow Comments under Discussions.
• Under Settings>Reading you can change which page you will post new posts to (i.e. the ‘blog page’).  Here also you can change which page is the Home page.
  • I changed our posts page to be Events because I’m using an Events Calendar plugin that works in conjunction with the posts page (see Plugins below).
• Under Settings>Permalinks you should change the default setting for how your URLs (“slugs”) are displayed.  If this were a blog, I would say use the second option that includes the date, however, as we’re creating a website not a blog, I would use a custom setting: /%postname%/.  Then check that the slugs are as descriptive as possible, as they are important for search engines to know what the content of each page is about.  If they need to be revised go to Pages>Edit, mouse-over the page name, select Quick Edit, and change it there.  Page slugs should have dashes between the words.

There are three main areas you will use when editing in Thesis:  Site Options (renamed in just-released version 1.7 from Thesis Options), Design Options, and a new area added v1.7, Home Page Options.

Tips for Using Thesis Theme – Site Options:

• If you’re making a website, not a blog, you’ll want to turn off all comment ability under Comments>Pages>Disable Comments On All Pages.
• Under Navigation Menu>Pages, check off the pages that you want included in the drop-down navigation menu and drag-and-drop them into order, however, I found out that sometimes plugins can interfere with this capability.  Specifically, a plugin that I’m using to create an Events Calendar had to be disabled for drag-and-drop to work (more on that below).
• Also under Navigation Menu, you can add Categories that you assign to posts into the nav menu and you can turn off having a Home page.   If you don’t want a border around your nav menu, change 1 px to 0 px under >Nav Border Width.

Tips for Using Thesis Theme – Design Options:

• Here you can change your site’s font, background colors, link color, if you want a 1, 2 or 3 column layout (2 is recommended unless you have good reason to use 3).  You can also change how wide you want your content and sidebar columns to be.
  • You may want to use ColorPicker to select the colors you need, or else when you change the background or content colors, a small color chart will appear.
  • Another interesting tool is Color Hunter, where you can upload an image and create a color palette for your site.
• The Multimedia Box in the sidebar is pretty cool.  Here you can upload images to your /custom/rotator/ folder and it will rotate them in the sidebar.  Or, you can embed a video or add custom code.
  • Note: if you change the color of your content area’s background, you’ll want to change the Multimedia Box>Image Box Background Color to match.
• Make sure under Custom Stylesheet you check the box Use Custom Stylesheet.  You’ll need it, but more on that in my next post.

Tips for Using Thesis Theme – Home Page Options:

• Under Home Page Display you can select the number (or ‘all’) of “featured posts,” those that will be ‘normally displayed’ on the posts page in entirety, or where you cut a post with the More tag: .  Remember under Settings>Reading we can change which page they post to, but since the default is Home they called it Home Page Options.

Tips for Filling in Pages:

When editing pages (and posts), the toolbar you have to work with is fairly self-explanatory.  I just want to point out the things that are not so obvious.

• Make sure when you create links to text, using this , that you fill in the Title field and choose Open Link In New Window unless you want visitors to be able to leave your site when following links.

For these, you will switch from the Visual tab into the HTML tab.

• You need to get comfortable working in HTML for certain things. For example, if you want to highlight something on the page, you can create an “alert” which surrounds the text with a yellow box (a Thesis thing, not WordPress).  Put the following around the text:

<p class=”alert”>whatever text you want</p>

• To increase the size of your font, you can change it to a Header under your Format drop-down in the toolbar.  If you don’t see this option, you may need to toggle on your “kitchen sink” button to see more of your toolbar, which looks like this:  However, you may want to edit your HTML instead of making the text a Header, as search engines look for Headers as descriptive of what is on the page.  Font sizes can be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.  Play with it till you get what you want.

<p><font size=”3″whatever text you want</font></p>

• For the site I’m working on, we want a 2 column layout within the content area on some of the pages.  I could not find a simple way to do it within Thesis so I inserted a table.  Here is that code for your use, where 760 was the entire width of my content+sidebar areas (I removed the sidebar when creating these pages) and the line color down the middle is #26ccd1 (replace with yours).

<table border=”0″ cellspacing=”0″ cellpadding=”0″ width=”760″>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width=”360″ align=”center” valign=”top”></td>
<td width=”20″></td>
<td width=”2″ bgcolor=”#26ccd1“></td>
<td width=”20″></td>
<td width=”360″ align=”center” valign=”top”></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Free WordPress Plugins

Plugins are widely available to solve nearly every problem you may have in customizing your website.  Once downloaded, you place them into the /wp-content/plugins/ folder, go to Plugins in your admin sidebar, and activate them.

• cforms – create multiple forms including multi-select boxes and insert them into any page using the icon that it adds to your toolbar: .  While not the easiest form maker to use, other plugins I looked at for this only allow the creation of a contact form. The form I need is much more involved so this was the better choice.  The help files are pretty explanatory, but a couple of tips:
  • When I tried to use the pre-defined “regular expressions” (regex for short) for phone and zip code fields that validate that they are real, I kept getting an error message when I submitted a test on the form.  I searched the support forum, googled the error code, and even posted in the support forum for help but didn’t get a response.  When I took them out, replacing them with just Phone and Zip, the form works but now anyone can put any garbage in there and it will ‘pass through.’  Bummer!
  • For multi-select fields you have to enter the following:  YourQuestion#Answer1#Answer2#etc.
  • Under Cforms>Global Settings>Database Input Tracking you can enable the ability to store responses in a database, which you can then access  under Cforms>Tracking.  Here you can view the responses to the forms on-screen or export them as a CSV and open then in Excel.
  • You can also have the system email you (and others) a copy when a form is submitted, under cforms>Form Settings>Admin Email Message Options.  Those who submit will get a confirmation in their email, editable under cforms>Form Settings>Auto Confirmation.
  • You can edit specifics of your form under Cforms>Styling>Basic CSS Editor.
    • Change the page width under .cform { width: 760px;
    • Change the width of text fields under .cform label {width:300px; AND .cform label span {width:300px;
    • Change the height of the multiselect box under .cform select.cfselectmulti    { height:5.5em;
    • Move the “(required)” text all the way to the left under span.emailreqtxt { margin:0px 5px 7px 0px; (change in red)
    • Change the font color by replacing it wherever you see color: #XXXXX or #XXX
• Exclude Pages – a wonderful WordPress plugin I went nuts looking for!  It removes page links in the sidebar, as we didn’t want the menu both across the top and down the side (on those pages that we did choose to have a sidebar).  It adds an Exclude Pages option under Pages>Edit (select Edit not Quick Edit), as a checkbox in the sidebar.
• Events Calendar – As reminder, I found that the Events Calendar interfered with my ability to drag-and-drop nav menu changes, so I simply deactivated and reactivated it.  This plugin puts a calendar in your sidebar, and when you create a new event you have option to publish to your posts page.  Therefore, I made the posts page my Events page for this particular website I’m working on.
  

There’s more to Thesis that I’ll continue in a further post.  At least I can say that the site I’m working on is moving along.    When it’s done I will post a link.

Some Good Resources

• DoubleMule
• Thesis Theme HQ
• Thesis Tutor
• Thesis Hacker
• Thesis 101

The first result that came up is Maybelline’s website and is titled Maybelline New York: Products: Age Rewind The Eraser Treatment Makeup.  First of all, the name is just way too long.  I found out that “Age Rewind” is the collection name and “The Eraser” the product name.  Why not just say “The Eraser” and drop “Age Rewind” for simplicity?

The Maybelline website is not optimized for phone viewing, which is important these days especially for a consumer goods company.  Instead, the site comes up as several large buttons:

• Find Your Mascara << I was looking for The Eraser, not a mascara.
• Find Out More About Great Lash BIG! << I have no idea what this is and I don’t care.
• Wallpapers & Ringtone << What, are we in high school?
• Great Lash BIG Takes NYC: Watch The Video << I don’t yet have a phone that supports video, and I still don’t care.
• Sign Up for Text Alerts << There are no compelling reasons to sign up for text alerts.

On my desktop, the website does show information about the product but some of it makes me laugh and some things I would like to see aren’t there.

• They boast a “patented Micro-Corrector Applicator.”  The bottle looks like one of those glue bottles you get from an office supply store, that you squeeze to wet a sponge on top.  You know marketing has gotten a little out of control when a sponge is now a “Micro-Corrector Applicator.”  Just call things what they are and don’t get silly about it, please.  There is some concern about the sponge getting gross, but apparently most reviewers are satisfied by the “antimicrobial fibers” in the sponge.  I still would be concerned.
• On their site, they offer a “MyColorAdvisor.”  I simply click on my skin shade (light) and eye color (hazel), and (gasp!) they suggest my best color tones as all of the light tones.  What amazing powers of insight they have!
• I wanted to know the ingredients of the makeup but this is nowhere on their site.  I went to Target to see the product in person.  Looking at the ingredient list was like reading another language.  The only thing I noticed that is natural is water, and it was the second on the list.  It’s amazing what women will put on their face.
• It’s a “breakthrough formula with active ingredients!”  I looked at what “active ingredients” there are, and found it said 7% Octinoxate, an organic compound found in some sunscreens.
• The site could be more interactive.  Something that makes more sense than MyColorAdvisor?  Please?
• Where can the product be purchased?  I found it at Target, but where else? Why don’t brands tell people where to buy their products?
• At Target this product is $8.99 on sale but $10.99 regular price.  The exact same product in a regular bottle is $6.09 on Amazon and in a pump for $2.49 – $5.98 on Amazon.  Instead of paying such a premium for packaging, I’d rather go buy some good applicator sponges.

The next search result was a review of the product by Elke Von Freudenberg, who says the sponge doesn’t cover well and is too small.  She said the product has an oily feel to it, but after setting it with a powder this goes away.  On the positive side, she likes the coverage and long-lasting results.  A few more results down, another review of the product at Frugirl said she likes the product’s coverage also, and felt it absorbed into her skin rather than sat on top.

I then looked at their Facebook page.  Despite taking time to scroll all the way to the bottom, which wasn’t difficult as it was only a month old, there is nothing said about this product.

In summary, were I in the market for The Eraser, I would have been turned off when I couldn’t access the Maybelline website on my smartphone, by the price when the same product is available for much less in different packaging, by the lack of information on the brand’s Facebook page, and lack of interactivity on their website.  The couple of reviews I did see, however, might have made me reconsider.  It would be in Maybelline’s best interest to address these Fails and send influential bloggers in the beauty space a free sample for review.

At Digiday Social, a case study was presented by imc2 for Secret deodorant, a brand they have been working with since 2003.  The first type of cause marketing is finding something of marketing interest that resonates with the core values of the brand.  For example, Secret’s core brand value is “empowering women” so imc2 latched on to Lindsey Van’s petition to allow women to participate in ski jumping in the 2014 Olympic Winter Games (visit LetHerJump.com to sign the petition).  The commercial, which can be seen here on YouTube, resonated with the Digiday audience and received a round of applause, to which the speaker was unabashedly flattered.  Although the YouTube video has only received 1,500+ views, the company forwarded the LetHerJump domain to their Facebook page, which was smart.  The Page has nearly 40,000 Facebook Fans, which can be marketed to repeatedly (although this should be done well, which is a whole other challenge).

As a side note, another speaker at DigiDay pointed out how the advent of social sites such as Facebook has created the opportunity to constantly market to an audience, which on the plus side can increase Lifetime Customer Value (discussed in a previous post) but on the down side makes it harder to evaluate the affects of a particular marketing campaign.

In order to effectively implement the brand-alignment kind of cause marketing, several steps need to be achieved through primary research (if you need assistance, the company I work with, C.A. Walker, does this).  First, you must know what values you would like the brand to stand for, then you can use surveying to evaluate your brand’s values currently in the mind of the target markets (if any), and whether the values you would like to have associated with the brand would be acceptable in the mind of the target(s).  You can also ask what nonprofits, if any, they donate their time to so you can determine those you may want to evaluate if their brand values are in-line with yours.  From there, you need to create opportunities to attach the brand value to a particular nonprofit objective and market it.  Lastly, you should then re-test the market post-campaign to see what lift was created in terms of brand value awareness, brand loyalty, likelihood to purchase/switch from a competitor, etc.

In the instance of the Secret campaign, although I was one of the persons clapping for the video’s message at Digiday, if they were to ask me I would tell them it did not move the needle much towards me purchasing their product (this is why it’s always good to test campaigns!).  While it had some positive lift in my understanding and appreciation of the brand’s objectives,  there are other factors at play when it comes to my decision to purchase deodorant that, if I became a Facebook Fan based on this campaign, would still not be communicated.  The campaign needs to be reinforced by standard product feature marketing, including price, whether it goes on clear, effectiveness and possibly also scent.  Ways they could swing my vote are:

1. Allow me to buy a sample size before committment of the next several months of my armpits to their product, or send me a free trial in the mail or via in-store handout.
2. Package trial-sized versions of different scents together, so I could determine which of several options I prefer.

The second type of cause marketing is the more typical “sponsorship,” expected to grow 6% over the next year to $1.61 billion, according to a recent IEG Sponsorship Report.  Much marketing discussion recently has centered on the increase in “microsponsorships,” which is the giving, by a company/brand, of a few hundred or few thousand dollars to consumers to fund pet projects.  There are pluses and minuses to the trend, specifically (numbers correspond to sources at bottom):

Pluses:

• Well-conceived programs can be priceless, both in terms of the value they provide society and the business benefits they bestow on the corporations and brands that undertake them.1
• They can be a truthful, sustaining, committed approach to improving the environment and people’s lives.1
• More marketers are latching on to this, and rightfully so, because there is more transparency in where the money is going.2
• For some marketers, microsponsorships present a much-needed icebreaker in social media.2
• Sponsorships may be more market research than marketing campaign.2
• They build databases of those consumers applying for grants or voting…so marketers can reach out to them in more meaningful ways.2
• 79% of consumers say they would be likely to switch from one brand to another (when price and quality are about equal) if the other brand is associated with a good cause.2

Minuses:

• Too often we see marketers adopt causes just for the sake of having one, which often results in a mismatch between the cause’s purpose and the marketer’s [reason for being].1
• Causes appear to be a convenient charity upon which a brand can piggyback to goose its Facebook friend count or incite some quick blogger hits.1
• Just as consumers quickly saw through the rampant green-washing of the past decade, brand beware: They’ll see through your cause-washing, too.  And even if they don’t, they’ll forget about you and what your brand stands for when you move onto the next shiny marketing idea.1
• Too often companies view cause efforts as a tax they must pay.2
• Even tiny sponsorships have to be closely associated with your brand…whatever you decide to pursue can’t be an isolated campaign.  It has to tie into a bigger program that attracts people with similar values and those have got to be clearly stated.2
• Microsponsorships make it easy to “lose control of the brand,” especially when doling out small sums to far-flung strangers.2
• One downside of these programs is that they are “just pecking away” at big problems.2
• For people to be more engaged is generally a good thing, but what are the tradeoffs if people think, “I’ve voted for this; I’ve spent half an hour online looking at these projects and signing petitions, so I’ve done my civic duty.”2
• Often microsponsorships lack focus, and it’s difficult to determine ROI.  The most successful sponsorships are long-term, sustained sponsorships. Microsponsorships fly in the face of that. It’s the equivalent of unfocused granting. You want to have an impact on a cause and be given credit for that impact.2

One of the largest and well-known microsponsorship campaigns currently is Pepsi Refresh.  In order to address the issue of hard-to-define ROI, “Pepsi is employing a battery of diagnostics, including gauging of brand-equity measures that correlate with volume. The brand has also partnered with Good, Global Giving and Do Something, third parties that are on-board to ensure quality and credibility. As for getting the word out about the brand’s impact, there are plans to profile the grant winners and highlight what they’ve accomplished with the money later this year.”2

An upcoming microsponsorship campaign by Prilosec OTC is one to keep your eyes on also.  Read Prilosec Works to Become ‘Sponsor of Everything’ for more on their efforts.

1 AdAge -  Cause Campaigns Must Benefit Brand and Greater Good

2 AdAge – Cause Effect: Brands Rush to Save World One Deed at a Time

First off, you should watch their demo to see how Google AdWords Display Ad Builder works.  When I first log into Google AdWords, I am presented with  “create a new campaign.”  I enter a name for the campaign and then select where I would like the ad to be seen. What’s interesting here is that I can choose to target businesses if I am creating an ad for a B2B operation.  If so, I can then connect to the Google Local Business Center, if a business owner, or add addresses manually, if not.  If a B2C operation, I  can instead choose to target by demographics, male/female and age range only.

I then select the networks I want to run in and on what devices, desktops/laptops and/or mobile.  I then decide if I want to pay on a CPC (cost per click), CPA (cost per acquisition), or CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis.  If I want CPA, it directs me to setup conversion tracking on the Reporting tab, meaning, I will pay only if there is a sale, signup, lead generated, or view of a specific page.  This step provides conversion tracking code that has to be added to the web page.  I then enter a budget for the campaign per day, if CPC I enter a bid limit, and start and end dates.  Lastly, I can also choose to cap frequency, meaning, the same person won’t see the ad or “ad group” more than once per day, per week or per month.

Once I have saved my options, on the next screen I can choose to create a text, image or mobile ad, or select Google AdWords Display Ad Builder.  I then enter keywords (and negative keywords) manually or upload a spreadsheet (see my blog post Free Keyword Suggestion Tools for help with this step).  Pressing the “estimate search traffic” button, I will see what Google figures my average cost per day would be, given the maximum CPC and budget entered previously.  Lastly, I can enter specific websites that I would like to show the ad (see my blog post Manage Your Advertising ROI with Google AdPlanner for help with this step).

Finally, I’m now at the step to create the display ad.  My options are: create an ad for a currently hosted YouTube video, place a 15 or 30 second video ad within video publisher content, create a click-to-play video creative, create a “roll-over showcase,” “tabbed showcase,” “scrolling showcase,” “peel effect,” or slideshow.  They also have various templates for seasonal ads or for companies that specialize in education, entertainment, financial, retail, technology and travel.  Lastly, they offer “people” ads with, what else, people in them doing things like pointing, running, hugging and dancing.  You can even select to see those ads that offer the highest click-throughs.

If you’re wondering where these ads will show up, there is information here on the Google Network, Gmail, Search Network (Google search results pages and the search results pages of Google’s search partners), Content Network, and Content Network Partners.  Also, remember you can specify locations in the earlier step.

A new development in Google AdWords Display Ad Builder you should be aware of is their recent acquisition of Teracent.  You will soon be able to setup “intelligent display advertising” to have multiple elements within the same ad that can be targeted to the recipient based on geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.  While dynamic ad serving is exciting, it will also create more work for those setting up campaigns and we will once again return to talks of multivariate testing (see my last post How To Test Landing Pages for more on this).

A couple of useful articles:

• How to link Google Analytics goals and transactions to AdWords Conversion Tracking
• How to import Google Adwords campaigns into Yahoo and MSN

Lastly, if you have website content that is new every day or can be used frequently, such as a blog, news feed, map, calculator, videos or games, you might consider creating a Google Gadget ad.  There are multiple ways to go about building a Gadget, including using their templates and wizards.  It says on their site, “To get started, all you need is a basic understanding of HTML. We will teach you all you need to know about XML to write gadgets. Later, as you write more sophisticated gadgets, you will probably want to learn some JavaScript if you’re not familiar with it already.”

If you use the tools that I have shared with you today, I’d love for you to come back and tell me your experience and how well it worked for you in achieving marketing ROI.

You may have heard of A/B or A/B/n Testing (“n” refers to the number of “cells” or groups of people who will see the landing page).  In this type of test, you create minimally two differing versions of your landing pages “A” versus “B” (and “C,” “D,” and so on) to see which outperforms.  You then serve the landing pages on an equal basis to the cells, and use cookies to make sure someone sees the same page again if returning.  Typically those who use A/B tests are testing wildly different landing pages, including number of images, copy and paths.

Multivariate testing involves testing the same landing page but with different elements on the page.  Essentially, you are swapping out images, buttons and text when you are certain you’ve chosen the best design layout from your A/B tests.

It is important to consider statistical significance when testing landing pages.  You want to make sure that you have served the landing page to a large enough sample size in each cell before inferring any conclusions. The company I work with, C.A. Walker, provides a sample size calculator on its site that is helpful for this.  First, you enter the confidence level – typically 90% or 95%  – then enter your maximum allowable error – typically 5% or 10%.  If you’re not sure which to use, go with a 95% confidence and 5% error level.

Population size is a bit more tricky.  You can try searching online for a population size, e.g. “population size of [target] in [your city or nation],” and see what research surfaces that you can use.  If you are in the U.S., you can try finding your population size on the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates page.  For example, if I want to geotarget an ad to Los Angeles women, I can see from the Age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin estimates under Population Estimates that there are 9.8 million people living in LA and 4.9 million of them are female.  Plugging this into the  calculator, the sample size is 384.  Therefore, I would need to test each landing page on a minimum of 384 women in order to infer conclusions.

Another way to look at this is using Marketo’s Landing Page Version Calculator, which allows you to enter the number of expected conversions per day and your confidence level to get back either the number of test versions you can have or the length of the test you need to allow.  If I enter 100 conversions per day at a 95% confidence level and 30 days for the test, it says I can run 13 versions of a landing page to generate statistically valid results.

Google’s Website Optimizer is a free tool you can use for landing page testing.  To do so, you setup a “new experiment,” choose either A/B or multivariate testing, create and publish different versions of your test page at unique URLs, and then also create and publish a “thank you” page that users reach after they’ve completed a successful conversion.  You then add tags to your pages so Google can track.  From Google’s Adding Tags help page, “If you’re running a multivariate experiment, you’ll need to add tags to both your test page and your conversion page. If you’re running an A/B experiment, you’ll need to add tags to your original page, all test page variations, and your conversion page. You can find detailed instructions for adding all the tags in our Installation Guides for multivariate experiments and A/B experiments, as well as information about how to deal with tags in relation to shared headers and existing HTML code.”  Website Optimizer will then provide you with a report on your tests to see how well each combination or variation is performing.

If the idea of creating multiple landing pages and managing tags sounds about as much fun as a root canal, then consider your paid options.  I recently demo’d ion interactive’s LiveBall product, which does much of the work for you and is fully hosted on their site.  Their pricing starts at $1,295 a month for unlimited number of landing pages and 10,000 visitors per month, and goes down if you get more traffic than that.  For that price, they start you off with 12 landing pages complete with forms and images relevant to your industry; all you have to do is add copy.  They also include 15 templates that you can use to change the look-and-feel of your pages on the fly. The templates are designed around 1 theme for each brand, for each season, or for each client (if doing this for multiple clients) and include 1 stock image gallery for each business (or you can use your own images).

If you want them to design your landing pages for you, they offer that service for an extra monthly fee or on an ad-hoc basis.  They say some of their clients opt for the extra service for the first several months in order to build up their library and then do it themselves from there.

When you log in to their service as a client, the first thing you see is a dashboard to monitor real-time results of your landing page effectiveness.  Your landing pages are represented by bubbles on a grid:  the larger the bubble the more traffic you’ve received for that particular landing page, and the higher on the grid the better the conversion rate.  In addition, the bubble are “live” meaning you can click on them for greater detail on that campaign.

To use the LiveBall system, you first create a “portfolio,” then “campaign,” then add a “path” to the campaign that is either new – chosen from the optional “frameworks” provided – or you can choose to copy a path over from another portfolio or campaign.  A “path” is simply the series of pages that a person sees during the conversion process, which can be as simple as Page A and then the “thank you” page, or you can add intermediate pages that tries to upsell other products. I’m not sure how exactly, but was told their system also segments users to deliver robust landing paths/experiences. 

To add a page, you select from the pre-determined master pages provided, change out the nonsense text and remove areas you don’t want to use.  In addition, 3 forms are provided for you but are easily editable.

The last step is selecting the traffic source, e.g. Google, and it creates a unique URL for each traffic source for you.  Here you can also choose to “auto-optimize” your landing pages, meaning that the system will determine when the pages reach statistical significance and pull poor-performing landing pages for you.  You can also set it up to send people to another page when statistical significance is reached for that particular traffic source.

They also provide for you “advanced rules” (conditional logic) on the page or content level – 20 conditions, 15 actions.  They are useful for geotargeting – substituting content on a page based on the region coming from – or previous action,  such as adding the user’s specific search query into the page text or sending them to another page if they didn’t convert the first time they visited.

For reporting, you can view how a campaign is performing on a portfolio level, go into an individual campaign, or into individual paths.  The dashboard is dynamic, meaning you can easily switch from viewing your results as a tag table, a respondent funnel, a pie chart, or other options.  You can see other views there as well, such as which keywords are working best for you.

So that’s my primer on how to test landing pages and what some of your free versus paid options are.  Some other resources I recommend on this topic are:

• 7 Best Tips to Create Landing Pages for PPC Campaigns
• The Cost of Landing Page Optimization
• Landing Page Testing: How to test and what to test
• Autonomy’s Best Practices for Optimizing Landing Page Performance, who have their own landing page solution
• SiteSpect’s Best Practices for Site Optimization, who have their own landing pages solution

Happy ROI hunting!