Monday, December 14, 2009

Emotional Marketing Messaging vs. Facts Based Rational Messaging

I was just re-reading an Article from earlier this year in Advertising Age that talked about why emotional marketing messages beat the rational ones. They looked at 880 case studies, covering two recessions to see if there was any difference between the "good and bad times". What was determined was emotional advertising was twice as likely to generate profit gains than the rational ones, with the campaigns that use both, splitting the difference right in between.

The biggest difference was the emotional marketing reduced price sensitivity, which helped companies to be able to hold more firm on their pricing (with a better economy, it would allow you to probably charge a premium). Emotional advertising allows one to create a sense of differentiation for your brand and helps it appear to be worth "more" to the customer. However, a person that would respond to more data driven advertising or rational messaging, is typically more analytical so it is expected that they are more price sensitive because they would be one that "does their homework" first.

Balancing this in the Internet age takes some effort because of how Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Websites, and everything can spread more quickly - especially through industry trade channels. If you combine that with the fact that 80%+ people research what they want to buy online (especially if it is not a standard consumable good) then you have to make sure your message reaches across all mediums.

If you ask most business owners, "Would you like to be able to keep 1% more through your price or increase your volume 1%?", holding that price would be more to the bottom line that the equivalent increase in sales volume. Your marketing needs to help you achieve that.

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Have you locked up your Brand Identity for Social Media?

There are several sites out there that people use for sharing information and more social media aspects that you should consider registering your name. Even if you don't plan to use Facebook or Twitter, we would advise you at least lock up your name so someone else cannot steal it - which is known as "squatting". Besides, just because you don't plan to use either of them does not mean there isn't the next hottest one around the corner that you should lock up.

This happened with domain names in the mid 90's as websites were coming into popularity. Several Fortune 500 companies ended up in court trying to get their trademarked names back. There has not been any precedence set for Social Media and if and how companies can get control of their Brand once it has been registered by someone else who is not them. As reference, here is an article from Adage that shows you some of the big Brands that don't own their Twitter identity.

You can see if anyone has squatted you out and potentially avoid that by visiting UserNameCheck.com . There are 68 different sites that someone could "squat" you on. Some of them you have never heard of, several are familiar and you can find all the different sites people could squat your identity on. You never know what might be the next big fad or emerge so it is best to lock them up and as new "fads" come out, register those as well, even if you don't ever use them - you can at least know you are protecting your Brand when it comes to Internet & Web Marketing and Social Media.

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Google buys Mobile Ad Leader AdMob

Marketing to Mobile Devices is here to stay and only going to increase. With the new droids and Blackberry Storm2 and the iPhone, this is only going to be more prevalent and more people move to these data savvy phones. These devices also require you to get a data plan so they are always connected to the Internet as long as they are in a service area - no "hot spot" needed.

Google has deep enough pockets to keep anyone at bay. The interesting part of this deal is it was an all stock transaction - but $750 MILLION worth of stock. The interesting part of this is their sales are $40 and most experts think ad networks should be worth 6 times sales - or in this case $240 million. They received TRIPLE that figure - will it pay off? I think so.

If you are in a consumer oriented market, you need to begin to think about this as part of your media mix. In a lot of ways this will be BIGGER than the social media craze...certainly more valuable and measurable than that.

For a good article about this acquisition of AdMob by Google, visit this Adage Article

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