Month: March 2013

Using Branded Content In Your Content Marketing Arsenal

Regardless of what mediums are in your content marketing arsenal: mobile marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, direct mail, outdoor, and on and on – “branded content has the ability to create brand differentiating by bridging the gap between TV’s emotive power and digital media’s efficient reach.”

The reason for the quotes is that line comes directly from a recently-released Forrester report entitled How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content.

Penned by Forrester Research Principal Analyst Tracy Stokes, the report is chock-full of valuable insight and while stating, as mentioned previously, that branded content offers brands the opportunity to differentiate themselves – “marketers are struggling to build content at scale — to get the right message to the right consumer at the right time.”

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Building your backlist (and living with it forever)

Authors and musicians have one, certainly. This is the book you wrote seven years ago or the album from early in your career. The book keeps selling, spreading the ideas and making a difference. The album gets played on the radio, earning you new fans.

“Backlist” is what publishers call the stuff that got published a while ago, but that’s still out there, selling.

The Wizard of Oz, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits and Starsky and Hutch all live on the backlist.

Without a backlist, all book publishers would go out of business in no time. The backlist pays dividends long after the work is over.

Advertisers didn’t used to have a backlist. You paid for that magazine or newspaper or TV ad, and within just one cycle, it was gone, forever.

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What Is Programmatic Advertising And Is It The Future?

I am by nature a very curious person especially when it comes to the world of marketing, advertising and branding. Be it the latest mobile technology or the newest social media platform or whatever, I am usually instantly drawn and my curiosity piqued.

So when I heard about “programmatic advertising” I knew I wanted to learn more. As I began to delve into it, I learned of some very interesting statistics related to it and specifically real time bidding (RTB). According to the IDC, “spending on real time-bidded display advertising will accelerate at a 59% compound annual growth rate through 2016, making in the fastest growing segment of digital advertising over the next few years.” 

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More Proof That Television Advertising Is Alive And Well

Ok, ok, quiet down everyone. All those who have predicted the demise of television advertising raise your hand. You know who you are, the ones who have forecast doom and gloom for television advertising in the digital age for years  now. You’ve been predicting that social media, mobile advertising, online advertising and digital advertising in general will spell the end of our near and dear friend – the television when it comes to advertising.

Television

This article is directly squarely at you or as we say in Philly – at yous. (Yes I know the grammar police will be after me but please pardon my brief colloquialism if you will.

If television advertising is on its death bed how do you explain the fact that almost two-thirds (62.4% to be precise) of all advertising dollars spent by the major media buyers was spent on television advertising?

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Want To Build The Perfect Social Team? Here’s Who You Need

How big is your team? A simple question but increasingly a not-so-simple answer. Three years ago the answer was easy. Me.
While not quite a one-man-show (thanks to agency support) I was the only full time person at McDonald’s dedicated to social media.
Today, our social media team not only has an expanded roster, but the responsibility and execution has become diffused across the organization. I’ll write more about our setup in a future post, but given our recent growth, I’ve begun reflecting on the different skill sets that we have and where we could grow. Today instead, allow me to dream a bit about what my dream team would look like.

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The Oxymoron That Is Digital Marketing

A recent report revealed that while budgets for digital marketing are expected to increase across many specific channels, including email marketing, SEO and mobile, one major component of digital marketing is decreasing and has in fact been falling steadily since 2010.

Digital-Marketing1

The report, a joint effort between Econsultancy and Responsys (full disclosure: the latter is my employer), highlights the findings of a survey conducted of more than 800 company and agency marketers.

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Some Top Social Hits & Misses of the Past Few Weeks

TedRubin-HeadShot-10.5.11-200x300It’s a wild and crazy social media world out there.  Small businesses, big brands, celebrities and everyone in between continues to struggle to find the right balance of engagement and sharing in social media (some with grace, others… not so much).  So, who knocked it out of the park and who struck out in social media in the past few weeks?

Here are a few notable items that gave me cause for pause:

Missed the Mark (by a mile)

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Chevy Proves Long Form Content Marketing On A Mobile Device Can Work

When it comes to content marketing the prevailing thought among marketers is that the longer the content the less likely it will be used on a mobile device. The thought being that people will not engage with long form content marketing on a mobile device thus that type of content is best served on a PC.

Well based on the results of a recent joint campaign between Chevy and mobile media company Zumobi, marketers may want to rethink long form content marketing and its potential use on mobile devices.

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5 Tips for Building a Positive Personal Brand Online

Anne Deeter GallaherWhenever I speak to a group of young people, I learn something from these bright Millenials—it’s a mini-focus group that helps me stay connected to the ideas, curiosity, and adaptability of digital natives. Whether I’m sharing with a social media savvy audience at Social Slam in Knoxville, TN, or with a small group of students who are members of Harrisburg University’s Social Media Club, I reinforce that managing our reputation online is imperative.

As founder of the Harrisburg Social Media Club and owner of a marketing/PR firm that integrates digital into every client’s marketing plan, I see the power of positive personal branding firsthand.  Although the channels have changed since I graduated from college decades ago, the same rules of good manners and self-discipline apply.

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Pulling Back The Curtain On Text Message Mobile Marketing

Ask 100 marketers if they use direct mail, email, social media, TV, radio, and/or outdoor in their marketing strategies and campaigns and the majority of them will respond in the affirmative.

Now, ask them if they use any mobile marketing tactics and they’ll tell you that mobile marketing comes right after taking a magic marker and drawing an ad on a bathroom wall in terms of priorities and hierarchy. Am I the only one who finds it amazing – utterly amazing mind you, that despite it’s rapid rise in usage and popularity, mobile marketing – especially text message mobile marketing, remains a mystery and enigma to many marketers?

I am surely not the only one who thinks this way, right?

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