I love the holiday season! During the month of December, I revert to a nine year old, anticipating the slew of holiday traditions upon us. First, my family assembles the fake pine-like tree in our living room. (Well, my father assembles the tree while I read the directions.) Then, my siblings and I decorate it until it looks like a personalized Santa’s beacon with every light blinking.
One of my favorite parts of the holiday is gift-giving. However this year it seems like more of a financial burden than fun. Brands seem to understand this and are incorporating humor into social media holiday campaigns. Old Spice and its MANta Claus One Man, Seven Billion Gifts campaign is one example.
While a far cry from seven billion gifts, here is how I am using social and online media to spread a little holiday cheer while spending only $43 on presents for four family members, three awesome friends, two roommates, and one cat.
1. Craigslist. I love Craigslist for vintage and technology. I found a quality, fully-functional vintage record player for free. It just needed a little TLC, and my father (whose record player broke) would love this. ($200 value). I also received 30 vinyl records, which I am giving half to my dad and the other half to my roommate who equally loves vinyl – potentially saving $20 on gift for said roommate.
Remember to check if it works before paying and to ensure the seller is legit. Also, make sure you know what your receiver wants. There is no use getting something for free if no one wants or needs it.
Spent: $0
2. Groupon. I love Groupon for trips, beauty/spa deals, events, and classes. But we all know how addicting Groupon was when we first signed up and started buying all those Groupons that we thought we would use, but probably won’t. Now we can put them to good use. I have six random Groupons from a day spa to belly dancing. I am giving a Groupon to my sister, mom, and two of my friends. ($800 value).
Again, before giving random Groupons to people (unless you don’t care and will never see them again) make sure you know they will actually like the gift.
Spent: $0
3. Marshalls. Marshalls is great to buy name brand for less. I bought an adorable jewelry box set for my other roommate and a mouse toy for the cat.
Spent: $10
4. eBay. I bought a miniature doll tea set for my best friend who loves all things miniature. eBay is a smorgasbord, if you know what you want this site is loaded with deals.
Spent: $10
5. Barnes and Noble. I love my brother and he loves Legos. So, with my sister’s help we split the difference for the LEGO 2011 Architecture White House and received a 10 percent discount because I am a member.
Spent: $23
The best part is that my friends and family are getting something that they always wanted.
What other ways have you used social and online media to saved money or to promote your products and services during the holidays?
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Bio: Before joining the BurrellesLuce team in 2011, as social media specialist, Ruth worked as a marketing assistant in a kitchen design firm and, later interned with Turner Public Relations. She holds a BA in Economics with a minor degree in International Relations from Rowan University. In addition to economics, education, and finance – Ruth is passionate about understanding the business implications of social media, including how it can be used to increase ROI, find and maintain a career, and create a business. Connect with her on Twitter: @RuthMesfun LinkedIn: Ruth Mesfun Facebook: BurrellesLuce
A lot of industry professionals stopped by our both, this week, at the PRSA Conference in Orlando to check out our media outreach, media monitoring, media reporting, and social media monitoring services. While there, they took a few pics, entered to win some cool prizes and provided feedback.
Above: Patrice Tanaka, CRT/tanaka and Johna Burke, BurellesLuce
Is it really necessary for companies to monitor social media in order to interact with their customers? Or is there a better way to observe and report on your client base?
Rick Mans believes this to be so in his blog post entitled, Why Companies Should Not Invest in Online Monitoring, featured on Social Media Today. He writes that “If companies really cared about what was going on, they would have invested in such a social infrastructure that complaints/news about their products and services would come to them in no time.”
He goes even further by stating “…monitoring tools are a poor man’s solution to engage with your audience… when you are in touch with your audience and your audience can find you and you have created a group of loyal people (brand ambassadors / evangelists) around your online presence, you won’t need monitoring tools to discover complaints.”
This runs counterpoint to a contention of the modern business age that all social media must be monitored in order to truly be in touch with all of your customer feedback.
However, I believe the point Mans attempts to make is that if the proper feedback infrastructure is created internally, then the monitoring of online media will only be redundant. Moreover, no news should be breaking in the world of social media that you shouldn’t have been made aware of and are already working towards either finding a solution or a way to profit from it.
In a perfect world this may be so. Even if companies create their own customer feedback rail network, they still must possess the ability to anticipate the response in the social media world in order to best deal directly with their client base. After all, if a customer truly cares enough, they will vent or praise in their preferred online outlet (be that Facebook, Twitter, or some other forum) regardless of whether a company maintains a presence there or not.
Thus, it is imperative that we do both – monitor online media and genuinely listen to and engage with constituents. That is why BurrellesLuce is working even harder to create even more tools to help you listen, manage, and respond to the activities taking place in both traditional and online news, social media, and broadcast. Stay tuned in the coming month(s) as we unveil new ways for you to effectively take charge of your WorkFlow.
In the meantime, what do you think? Is it critical to incorporate online monitoring into the larger engagement funnel or is it merely a show put on by companies? How are you using online monitoring in your public relations and marketing efforts? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of Fresh Ideas.
Retargeting – when online targeted advertising is delivered to consumers based on previous Internet actions that did not result in a past conversion – has become more importunate (persistent) as we continue to increasingly use the Internet to shop, order food, book travel, monitor the news or for pretty much anything you want to do without leaving the house.
It is also becoming more widely used within the advertising arena. With so many similar brands in the market it is hard to differentiation yourself from the other guy, and this form of remarketing can help to successfully convert those lost opportunities.
Oddly enough, after reading Learmonth’s post I was having dinner with my friend Nancy who was “weirded out” by a similiar experience. Ever since she booked a room at Loews Hotel ads for the hotel began appearing on every website that she visited. She is a sales trader so PPC (pay-per-click), Twitter, retargeting, and cookies are not really in her vocabulary. So I thought it would be interesting to research if retargeting is as effective as marketing and advertising professionals believe and how it actually works.
According to Criteo, a company that specializes in scalable personalized retargeting, more than 90 percent of website visitors leave before converting (i.e., making a purchase, downloading a white paper, etc.) Other research has shown that it can take at least seven follow-up emails or phone calls with prospects to actual convert them to a sale. If we are only tracking those visitors that convert on our physical websites, we are simply losing out on a possible sale down the road. Websites these days are optimized for search and have the technology to place cookies on each visitor’s computers to measure the site’s true audience size, but that is only capturing IP addresses most of the time. Then they have us, until we remove all our cookies and empty our cache.
So how do these retargeting customized ads work? When a prospect/client browses your website they become tagged with a snippet of code, which tracks which products they have shown interest in. When they leave the website and begin visiting other pages that’s when the retargeting begins. Banner ads customized to their search on your site start appearing on sites all over the web, from news, social networks, blogs, etc.
Companies that are using retargeting firms, such as Fetchback, in their marketing strategy have seen a 592 percent increase in ROI and conversions up by 94 percent. There are many other benefits to this form of behavioral marketing. It helps streamline all of your campaigns and the frequency of the ads helps keep your brand on the top of prospects minds. (Most services have an integrated feature that allows you to place a limit on the frequency at which the ads appear, so you don’t bomb your potential clients and “creep” them out because everywhere they go they see you.)
Plus, your ads are not static on a particular site related to your industry, which usually does not yield a lot of traffic because that market is already saturated and are either already your clients or know who you are. With retargeting your ads you are only reengaging with new prospects that have already shown interest in your brand; you can focus on what their needs are and manage your ROI.
In short, retargeting helps build your brand and online presence, while increasing the chances of reengaging your audience. It is not going to convert all on its own and has to be used with traditional marketing tactics to be effective. So don’t eliminate your current strategies. It is also important to measure the effectiveness of your retargeting campaigns, ensuring it is worth the investment and that your conversion rates are higher.
This article from Inc. Magazine highlights a retargeting success story involving Scottevest and its partnership with firm AdRoll.
There is one downside to the growing popularity for converting leads more efficiently via retargeting and that is the possibility that people may have the choice to opt-out (a do not call list for the Internet) of all behavioral targeting ads. What does that do for brands that are following the rules and not hunting down prospects on the web? We lose the opportunity to generate qualified leads for our sales team and revenue for the company. If you do use retargeting make sure you limit your reach frequency because when people begin to feel harassed and stalked by brands they will opt-out; I would.
Is your organization taking on the strategy of retargeting advertising? If so, how successful have you been with campaigns and reengaging lost prospects? Do you think we should have the right to opt-out of all behavioral targeting ad campaigns or just the irritating ones? Please share your thoughts and ideas with me and the BurrellesLuceFresh Ideas readers.
While looking at my Tweetdeck on HootSuite yesterday, I started singing the song “Follow” in my head by Genesis. This is a great song from the 80s that brings back a memory of my sister and brother-in-law dancing to their wedding song. Though, this time it wasn’t the memory of my sister’s first dance. I think the reason it came to me was the buzz lately regarding following and un-following on Twitter these days.
Flickr Image: alasam
In addition, as my followers can attest, I was recently the victim of a spam attack which sent out “inappropriate” messages to all of my followers. Thankfully those who received the message quickly informed me of the issue. For many, this was the first time we had directly communicated with one another, however – not exactly the best first impression. But unfortunately, I am not the first person and probably won’t be the last to have their account hacked while using Twitter.
Both the headlines and my recent situation have inspired me to look more closely at the people who follow me and I in return follow back.
One example is a follow I received from @alatulip26268. While I’m flattered to have gained another follower, why are they following me? Is it because they are tied to public relations and possibly curious about the services BurrellesLuce can provide? Or, perhaps we share the same interests – such as a passion for skiing? Upon closer examination, it seems as though this profile amounts to little more than spam or at least that’s how it appears. So I did not follow @alatulip26268 back.
Another example is a recent follow I received from @worob. This follow I felt “privileged” to receive because @worob is in a similar industry as me and has quite an impressive bio: “Former reporter turned PR rock star, Publisher for PR at Sunrise, Creator of Big East PR Pros Networking Group on LinkedIn, SM enthusiast & aspiring guitarist!” I decided it could be very beneficial to follow this person back after reading some of his past tweets. Although I have not engaged with @worob yet, I hope to and anticipate @worob is following me for all the same reasons I’m following him.
There has also been some talk that many are using Twitter as merely a numbers game or a popularity contest to see how many followers one can accumulate. To gain more followers, many are only following someone to get a follow back.
Mikinzie Stuart (@mikinzie) recently wrote about this subject in a post on the Brazen Careerist blog entitled, “In Review: FriendorFollow.com.” FriendorFollow.com is a website that tells you who out of those you follow do not follow you back. Mikinzie, who I follow, wrote that when she first went on this site she was upset that many of those she follows, has engaged with, and even met in real life have un-followed her.
She goes on to say that at first it bothered her but now it does not one bit. She’s not on Twitter for the numbers or the popularity. I agree and will not be discouraged by my un-followers, which I did check out and was surprised by, and will as Mikinzie put it “continue to share in the mutually beneficial relationships derived from my Twitter community.”
Do you follow back every person who follows you? What are your guidelines for those you follow?
*Bio: Colleen Flood has been a sales consultant with BurrellesLuce for over 12 years and is eager to become a more integrated part of the social-public relations community. She primarily handles agency relations in the New York and New Jersey metro-area. She is not only passionate about work, but also about family, friends, and the Jersey Shore. Twitter: @cgflood LinkedIn: Colleen Flood Facebook: BurrellesLuce
Is it really necessary for companies to monitor social media in order to interact with their customers? Or is there a better way to observe and report on your client base?
brands in the market it is hard to differentiation yourself from the other guy, and this form of remarketing can help to successfully convert those lost opportunities.
