Easy Marketing is a Myth
Easy marketing is: spam, with no entry barriers, temporary, an escalation of force – expensive; http://eicker.at/EasyMarketing
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Twitter Stories
Twitter launches Twitter Stories: testimonials explaining how tweets impacted users; http://eicker.at/TwitterStories
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Gerrit Eicker
Display Drives Search
SEL: How search conversions are driven by display impression frequency; http://eicker.at/DisplayDrivesSearch
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Gerrit Eicker
Google Call Tracking
Google enables and optimises call tracking from mobile landing pages; http://eicker.at/GoogleCallTracking
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Gerrit Eicker
Google: “Mobile advertising has created an entirely new opportunity for businesses to drive phone calls to sales teams and call centers, generating a new method for our advertisers to receive qualified incoming leads. In fact, since we introduced the click-to-call feature to advertisers over a year ago, we’ve had more than half a million customers globally run campaigns with phone extensions. – Two of the most common ways to get mobile customers to call you are either by listing your phone number on a click-to-call ad, or adding your phone number onto your website. It’s easy to measure calls from a click-to-call ad from your Campaign reports, but it can be more challenging to track the calls made by consumers clicking on the phone number on your website. – Today, we are introducing a new conversion tracking metric to help advertisers and agencies do just that: all AdWords accounts will now have the ability to report calls placed from mobile pages. … You’ll now be able to attribute clicks on your phone number or ‘call’ button back to the AdWords campaign, ad group, ad or keyword that brought a customer in. As this is a new tracking metric, there won’t be new charges or changes to CPCs. We hope that this new metric will give advertisers and agencies new, richer information on the value and returns from their mobile advertising.”
Google: “This January [2011], we launched a Click-to-call functionality for mobile ads that enables advertisers to directly connect with potential customers over the phone. In less than a year, Click-to-call (CTC) ads have come a long way and hundreds of thousands of advertisers are using the ad format today. In fact, over the past three months we’ve seen the number of Google advertisers using phone extensions on mobile grow 28% month-over-month, globally. What’s more, Click-to-call ads on both Google Search and Display Networks are generating millions of calls every month on mobile. – We’re excited to see this response to Click-to-call ads and we’re only just getting started! … For more insight into the performance of your Phone Extensions and Call-only Creative ads, enable the AdWords Call Metrics feature. Using a dynamically assigned Google Voice number, Call Metrics provide campaign-level statistics on the number of phone leads generated by your AdWords ads including call duration and caller area code. Currently, Call Metrics is only available to a limited number of US advertisers, but we plan to bring this feature to more advertisers in the coming months.”
SEL: “Google’s Click to Call program has been a huge success. About a year ago Google reported that it had 500,000 advertisers using Click to Call. (That number was repeated again today in a blog post.) And last year former Google Product SVP Jonathan Rosenberg said ‘Click-to-Call ads are generating millions of calls every month.‘ – Calls and call metrics are increasingly important to Google because they’re a form of ‘offline’ conversion tracking that provides more visibility on the true efficacy of keywords and campaigns. … Google’s Click to Call program has relied to date on AdWords phone extensions. Phone numbers in mobile ads (on smartphones) are highlighted, users click them and initiate calls. Those calls are tracked. … For the present the new tracking capability is free. On the PC side Google charges $1 per completed call for its call tracking capability. I’m speculating by analogy that Google may eventually charge a fee for the service. They have not indicated to me that they will however.“
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Gerrit Eicker
Best Global Brands 2011
Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2011 follow an ordinary scheme: Apple, Google, IT grow strong; http://eicker.at/Brands2011
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Gerrit Eicker
Shanbhag, Interbrand: “Today we’re seeing an upheaval in the technology sector unlike any before. Driven by changes in the technology itself, we’re seeing brands that didn’t exist a few years ago driving the conversation. Teenagers like Google, Baidu, and Amazon are powering forward by blurring the lines between business models to create user value, while upstarts like Facebook and Zynga are creating business models that simply never existed. – But, for all the brand value being created, there is an equal amount of upheaval taking place with what might be considered the elder statesmen of the tech world. Whether it is Dell or HP, Intel or Microsoft, SAP or Oracle, the story is the same. Brands that once held the key to the hearts and wallets of the tech public aren’t what they once were. … So, what’s driving this change? It isn’t that the technology has changed (which it has), or that new technology has expanded what people can do with it (which it has, too). It’s that the world has changed. … [T]echnology brands from yesterday that stand the greatest chance of surviving today’s upheaval are the ones who have turned their attention to their audiences and focused on brand relevance. They are asking what matters to users and what will matter, and building entire portfolios of brands, products, and offerings that address the needs of today and tomorrow. They’re finding a space for themselves in the new tech order by putting real innovation – in product and point of view – front and center. In a way, they’re simply taking a page from the competition’s play books.”
Perlmutter, Interbrand: “It’s no surprise that Customer Experience has become critically important for brands. The evidence is mounting and has become almost cliché at this point. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, put it in the most basic terms: ‘Your brand is formed primarily not by what your company says about itself, but by what the company does.‘ With a net promoter score at 70 percent – among the highest of all companies according to Satmetrics, and an impressive 34 percent year-or-year brand value increase in the Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking, he has the ear of many industries. … Simply put, many companies are not yet set up to deliver the best possible customer experience. Marketing and operations are not well connected, customer understanding is weak, and overall, no one person or department is held accountable for bringing it all together on behalf of the customer. … Strong brands like IBM have an aligned company mission and brand meaning that is reinforced throughout all they say and do. And look closely at brands known for a successful, well-defined customer experience – Virgin Airlines, W Hotels, US Airways, BMW Mini, Whole Foods – and you’ll find a well-activated brand strategy as the foundation. … If brand strategy is the catalyst for change, then customer understanding is the roadmap. … Some companies have capitalized on having an intimate understanding of customers’ needs and the ability to anticipate desires. They have then used these insights to improve their customer connectedness with appealing products and services and involving marketing programs that engender loyalty. … Some of today’s best brands are successful because they are authentic. Pure and simple, they stay true to who they are, and they are well differentiated as a result. … Activating an effective customer experience transformation is no small feat for any company. But for those looking to make some headway, using brand strategy to set the course for orchestrating what’s needed, is a great place to start.”
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Gerrit Eicker
Google Analytics: Real-time
Google Analytics goes real-time, finally: What’s happening on your site right now? http://eicker.at/GoogleAnalyticsRealTime
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Gerrit Eicker
Google: “What’s happening on your site right now? – Currently, Google Analytics does a great job analyzing past performance. Today we’re very excited to bring real time data to Google Analytics with the launch of Google Analytics Real-Time: a set of new reports that show what’s happening on your site as it happens. … One way that I like to use these reports is to measure the immediate impact of social media. Whenever we put out a new blog post, we also send out a tweet. With Real-Time, I can see the immediate impact to my site traffic. … You’ll find the Real-Time reports only in the new version of Google Analytics. If you’re not already using the new version, you can start by clicking the ‘New Version’ link in the top right of Google Analytics. … We just turned the reports on for a number of you, and over the coming weeks, everyone will have access to Real-Time.”
Google: “We learned from some of our largest customers that they have some specific needs that the current version of Google Analytics can’t meet in their entirety. Today we’re addressing these needs by announcing a new option built for our largest customers: Google Analytics Premium. … Extra processing power – increased data collection, more custom variables and downloadable, unsampled reports – Advanced analysis – attribution modeling tools that allow you to test different models for assigning credit to conversions – Service and support – experts to guide customized installation, and dedicated account management on call – all backed by 24/7 support – Guarantees – service level agreements for data collection, processing and reporting”
RWW: “Google Analytics, the super dominant free web analytics platform, has to date offered analytics that were roughly 24 hours behind. The wait to stop waiting has come to an end and today the company announced that Google Analytics is now rolling out real-time reporting to its users. … My prediction: Google Analytics is going to become a much bigger part of the company and a much broader offering in the future than it is today. With the recent purchase of startup Postrank, Google will be able to offer real-time social media analytics soon. As the definition of the web expands into and beyond mobile, into and beyond other newly connected devices, the Google Analytics offering will expand allong with the world’s understanding of information. It will organize all that information and now it has laid the groundwork do it in real time and for a fee.”
TC: “Google Analytics, the immensely popular suite of tools that Google offers to help webmasters track their site traffic, is getting a big boost this week: the service has launched a real-time dashboard that updates with user events as they happen. – That’s a big deal, as it brings Google more in line with popular real-time analytics products like Chartbeat, which allows you to track things like how many people are currently on your site, and how much traffic each individual article has gotten in the last few minutes. … In addition to Real-Time, today the Analytics team has also announced a premium tier for enterprise companies who want more support (and datapoints tracked) than Google offers with its free service. Google says that for an unspecified price, companies will be able to get phone support, SLA guarantees, and increased data limits.”
VB: “For quite some time, Google Analytics has offered webmasters a free way to measure traffic of their sites 24 hours after the action occurs. But since real-time traffic startups like Chartbeat (a service we use) and Woopra came onto the scene, Google Analytics has looked slow in comparison. Thankfully, that’s remedied with these new stats tools, which include social media impact and campaign measurement.”
LM: “Real-Time reports do not include profile filtering. That extra processing step is currently bypassed in the interest of optimizing speed. So even if you’re looking inside a filtered profile, keep in mind that no data is being filtered out of the Real-Time reports. – Let me emphasize that this doesn’t mean that all your GA data is now real-time. Some of GA’s standard reports have deep functionality that also requires too much processing to be reported instantly. You have to look in the Real-Time reports for real-time data.”
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Gerrit Eicker
Localisation
Pew: How people learn about their local community. Topics, Newspapers, TV news, Internet; http://eicker.at/Localisation
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Gerrit Eicker
Pew: “Contrary to much of the conventional understanding of how people learn about their communities, Americans turn to a wide range of platforms to get local news and information, and where they turn varies considerably depending on the subject matter and their age… Most Americans, including more tech-savvy adults under age 40, also use a blend of both new and traditional sources to get their information. Overall, the picture revealed by the data is that of a richer and more nuanced ecosystem of community news and information than researchers have previously identified.”
Pew: “The local news and information environment is changing in ways that most people believe makes it easier for them to get the specific information they want about their communities. More than half of Americans (55%) say it is easier today to get the local information they want than it was five years ago. … Top Popularity of Different Local Topics: Weather (89%), Breaking News (80%), Politics/Campaigns/Elections (67%), Crime, Arts/Cultural events, Local Business, Schools/Education, Community/Neighborhood events, Restaurants/Clubs/Bars, Traffic/Transportation, Taxes/Tax issues, Housing/Real estate, Government activities, Job openings, Social services, Zoning/Building/Development”
Pew: “The survey indicated that newspapers play a far more complex role in the civic life of communities than many Americans believe. … Younger adults, age 18-29, were especially unconcerned. Fully 75% say their ability to get local information would not be affected in a major way by the absence of their local paper. … [W]hen asked about specific local topics and which sources they rely on for that information, it turns out that many adults are quite reliant on newspapers and their websites.”
Pew: “Local TV (which for the purposes of this survey includes both televised broadcasts and local television websites) is the most popular source for the two topics that almost everyone is interested in – weather and breaking news.”
Pew: “The internet has already surpassed newspapers as a source Americans turn to for national and international news. The findings from this survey now show its emerging role as a source for local news and information as well. … Among the 79% of Americans who are online, the internet is an even more significant source for local news and information. Looking just at this group, the internet is the first or second most important source for 15 of the 16 local topics examined.”
Pew: “Two other factors seem to drive people to the internet when it comes to getting information about local subjects: mobile connections via smartphones or tablet computers and participation in the digital environment by sharing or creating local material themselves.”
Pew: “In addition to the three biggest media platforms – newspapers, television and the internet – the local news and information ecosystem involves a complex mix of other sources as well. And for several local topics, citizen-based systems such as word of mouth (which does not include online social networking), print newsletters and bulletins, and the local government itself make appearances as sources that some residents rely upon.”
Gerrit Eicker
My Name Is Me
#MyNameIsMe: We want people to be able to identify themselves as they wish; http://eicker.at/MyNameIsMe #PlusGate
Gerrit Eicker
Txteagle
Crowdsourcing the mobile way: txteagle clamps a global workforce in developing countries via SMS; http://eicker.at/txteagle
Gerrit Eicker
Online Politics
Pew: 22% of online Americans used social networking or Twitter for politics in 2010 campaign; http://eicker.at/OnlinePolitics
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Tim Rueb
The use of on-line (social media) by political consumers has changed the face of politics in the US. The old media still thinks it controls the message and by reason controls the agenda. This is all changing now.
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Gerrit Eicker
Ditto for Germany, but at large not as heavily as in the US yet.
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Twitter: “Today we’re launching the first in a series of Twitter stories. Read about a single Tweet that helped save a bookstore from going out of business; an athlete who took a hundred of his followers out to a crab dinner; and, Japanese fishermen who use Twitter to sell their catch before returning to shore. Each story reminds us of the humanity behind Tweets that make the world smaller. – Help us uncover more stories. Tell us how you or someone else have used Twitter in an interesting way. Submit your story by mentioning @twitterstories or by using the hashtag #twitterstories. Include a link to a photo or video that helps illustrate your story to the world. Each month we’ll curate a selection of profiles to share. – Follow @twitterstories to get the latest stories or check the site every month for a new collection.”
TC: “Last year, Twitter debuted a marketing campaign, called Twitter Tales, that showcased ways in which users interact with the microblogging platform. Today, the company is launching a similar campaign, called Twitter Stories, which seems to show interesting Tweets and ways the site’s users are communicating via the platform. … User stories are always a good marketing tool. Facebook launched a similar marketing campaign around their 500 million users milestone last year, called Facebook Stories. Google also launched Google Stories, which collects stories from users sharing tales about how Google effected their lives.”
TNW: “Twitter is fast becoming an integral part of the way that its users communicate and has proven its ability to act as a fantastic channel to receive information quickly. The US Government has even recommended that citizens use Twitter to contact one another during emergencies instead of traditional cellular or phone lines, which can get congested.”
HP: “Perhaps in an attempt to woo a more mainstream audience, Twitter has notably chosen to highlight several well-known celebrities and brands in the stories it picked, including Roger Ebert, Ochocinco, Queen Rania Al Abdullah, and Burberry.”
WP: “In its five-year history, Twitter’s been used for inane updates on what was breakfast, as a vehicle for real-time news and as a way to spread revolutionary social ideas. On Tuesday, the service launched a new site, ‘Twitter Stories,’ to share a handful of stunning ways that the micro-blogging service has made a positive impact on people’s lives.”
CNET: “Tales at a new site called Twitter Stories range from movie critic Roger Ebert‘s use of the service after he lost his voice, to a man who found a kidney donor after tweeting “Sh*t, I need a kidney,” to a man who saved his mother’s bookstore with a tweet, to pro football player Chad Ochocinco treating 100 followers to dinner with a surprise invitation delivered across the service.”