Digital Marketing Guide - Digital Fewsure

Social Media Security & Branding As 1 - Identity Verification Ads

 Solve Media TYPE-INs Turn Online CAPTCHA process into Marketing Genius

 

With the never ending growth of security in the online space, CAPTCHAs are vitally important in determining web users are actually human.  In case you don't know what a CAPTCHA is, it is that little box that pops up in certain instances when you try to click to your next destination---- it asks for you to type the word you see in the box before advancing.  Above you will find a picture of a CAPTCHA.  Of course you know what that is, you see one every day and even though its intentions are good, nobody likes the inconvenience that comes along with the process.

Solve Media has come up with a solution.  Now you can turn your Social Network security processes into brand marketing machines.  The company brings you TYPE-INs - the ad alternative to CAPTCHA.  To put it simple: TYPE-INs are making an annoying experience less annoying but jazzing it up a bit, while relying on the old learning idea - "writing it down, plants it in the brain"

Instead of simply seeing a word or phrase within the verification box, you now see an advertisement.  The user still asked to type in the word featured in the ad box, but this time the word can be brand relevant, forcing the user to interact with the advertisement before advancing.  Brilliant! I thought so at least.  The first question that came to my mind was... all of those words in the CAPTCHA security verification boxes are so loopy and don't make sense... so how can a brand have words that make sense? and how many variations do they need to come up with in order to keep it secure?  If they don't give a variety, does it make it easier for the security process to be hacked?  I hope to get a response back from the company soon and I will be sure to post when I do.

Outside of all my security questions, I think this is a very cool idea and a great marketing tool.

TYPE-IN Idea for marketers

This tool is all about branding.  The concept of writing/typing something in hopes of implanting it in the human memory bank can work - the question is what is the best strategy to ensure it does?

To me, it is all about weird, yet intriguing.  There are times when I see a CAPTCHA that makes me stop and think - such as "whale girlfriend" (got this one the other day).  That kind of phrase was so off key, yet intriguinly sensible that I stopped to think about it and have a laugh.  If you are a brand it is all about delivering that experience without stepping outside of who you are.  Therefore, if you are a bank, you probably don't want a phrase that says "robber candy" or something that is out of your cultural element.  Stay within your brand boundaries but think of ad content that is pushing the limit enough to spark curiousity.  It is okay to sound somewhat loopy in what is already a loopy situation.  It will be very interesting to see how much this ad tool catches on in the social media security realm.

 STILL UNSURE?  Watch the VIDEO

 

 

Facebook Places Marketing - An Introduction

Facebook Places - Intro Marketing Tips for your Business

Facebook places is an application that allows users to check in and promote their specific locations to the friends, family and favorite brands.  There are already many applications that provide this service such as Foursquare, GoWalla, and Loopt just to name a few.  And some of these applications already have a large scale of customers.  So when Facebook announced that it was going to get involved in the location based market, critics scratched their heads as to how this would all play out?  So instead of having an all out war with every location based service, Facebook decided to collaborate with them and provide "places" as a product that brings some of them together.  Allowing places integration with other location based updates from other brands.

The whole concept of geolocation is to provide more transparency between friends that share their life experiences.  Of course the other side of it is for business - if businesses know where their customers or potential customers are located that is a goldmine of marketing information with a lot of potential.  This is an intro guide to marketing tips for Facebook Places.

Who Can Utilize Facebook Places?

Right now, Facebook places is available as an iPhone application and also via their website if your phone supports HTML 5 and geolocation.  They are also rolling out the application to Android and Blackberry but there is no official date released yet.  So iPhone users will have the first crack at Facebook Places.

Checking in

Much like the other location based applications, when you want to announce your location you choose to "check-in."  On the Facebook app, tapping the "check in" button will prompt the app to map your location and provide the nearest business, landmarks, etc. around you.  Once you check in, your location will be posted on your friends typical news feeds whether or not they have places enabled on their phone.  Businesses will have yet another exposure channel with places, as friends check in's can lead on-lookers to investigate the location and interact with the brand/business.

What Can You Include with your Check-In? 

You can include a few details with your check in:

The first being a friend tag.  Much like tagging your friends in photos and videos, you can tag your friend in your update - showing that you are at this location with these people.  This feature is important to marketers due to the group effect.  If a person shows that they are checked in with many friends you may have more incentive to market to that person that someone who is checking in solo.

There is also a "People Here Now" feature that allows users to see who else is currently at and around their location.  Seem Creepy?  If so Facebook does allow users to turn this feature off if you don't want strangers seeing that you are around them.  This feature will be useful for networking events.  Marketers that attend these events usually have some idea of who else is attending but this feature will allow them to see and potentially interact with people they DIDN'T know would be there.  This could open doors for networking in that a marketer can leave that meeting knowing with close to 100% certainty that they met anyone they HAD to meet.

What if I Don't Want to Broadcast it ... But Want to Check in?

Facebook has put a lot of time into ensuring this application upholds the highest levels of personal privacy wishes.  Users are allowed to check in and not share their check in's with friends.  They are also notified each time they have been tagged by another friend and are given the option of accepting or deferring that tag.  You can completely remove the option of being tagged by going to settings and deselecting "Let Friends Tag Me."  The application settings also allow the user to control who sees their location right down to the very person.  You can customize your updates to be seen by friends, friends of friends, everyone (public), or just the people you specify.

  Is this a marketers nightmare?  No, allowing people the space to privatize their life is always a smart move for marketers, the trick is getting them to WANT you to see.  Marketers will have to offer incentives to people in order to break privacy concerns.  Just more motivation in my eyes.

Comments

Users can also leave comments about the places they are visiting.  Foursquare allows "shout-outs" and this is no different.  For marketers, the comments function is a good and bad feature.  The good - a visitor loves the location and the services or activity associated with it.  The bad - the user thinks the exact opposite and starts bad mouthing the whole experience.  Basically marketers should figure out a way to control these comments like they control all their social conversation.  Track the comments and offer customer service to those who need it in near real time and/or offer rewards to customers who give you positive word-of-mouth

Push Notifications

Push notifications can be turned on through settings to show the user when their friends are nearby.  If I am hanging out at the Argo Tea Shop on the corner and my friend is a block away, some days I would never know.  If both friends have Places, they can see that they are not far from one another and arrange to meet and say hi.  Who ever said the digital age kills personal interaction?  For marketing, become friends with your customers and when they are nearby, you have the option of offering them an incentive to stop by and visit.  Like giving flyers away outside but waaaayyyy more cool and they feel more special as a customer because the message can be personalized.  Be as personal as you can be and you improve your chances of winning that customer over.

Create a Place for your Business

Here is the link for you to create a "place" for you business. Highly recommended by us. It can't hurt?  But make sure to check if you business is already within their location database. Create a Place for your Business 

Facebook Has a Brief Guide for Advertisers

This guide will give you more detailed information on advertising with Places.  Facebook Placed Advertising Guide.

A Few Points

• Right now users are not allowed to edit "places." Foursquare and other location based services do allow users to edit places, but for now Facebook has their own database of location information that they pull from

• Locations that are brands such as Target Stores, do not have direct links to their Facebook pages or website.  If they form an advertising partnership with FB this may available

****Check Back in a few weeks for more marketing tips with Places and an updated guide***

Facebook Social Ads - The Dummies Ad Targeting Platform

Facebook Social Ads Make it Easy for Advertisers to Create Ads, Target Ads, Analyze Audiences, and Manage Payment Options.

When Facebook decided to open its doors to outside advertisers, they knew it would be a big revenue stream for them.  At first, the idea of advertising on Facebook was simple.  You have profile data, you can target ads and operate the ad network much like a Google AdWords campaign. However, Google and search had caught on mainstream with business and this made it easy for advertisers to trust and operate the Google Ad network.  Facebook was still a mystery, especially to new users in the business world.  The social networking platform is still very new to most people and Facebook was smart enough to realize this before moving forward with their advertising service.

Say Hello! to Facebook Social Ads.  Facebook Advertising

Facebook social ads make is very easy to create and manage your advertising campaign.

• Design - The Facebook ad program allows you to design your Facebook ad on-site and you are allowed to insert a graphic and text copy.  The ads look simple and clean cut.  You area allowed up to 25 characters for your Title (blue at the top) and 135 characters for your ad body text (under the graphic).  You can upload any picture that you want as long as you have the rights and it is appropriate in the eyes of Facebook.

photo courtesty of  http://www.ballotrevolution.org/images/facebook-ad.jpg

• Target Your Ad - You are allowed to target your audience by using demographic and psychographic filters such as:

Age

Sex

Relationship Status

Keywords

Employment

Education

Languages

Location

Interests and Hobbies

• Pricing Management - You spending limit is set around a daily schedule. You have to spend at least $1 per day to maintain a Facebook Ad campaign.  It is entirely up to you the amount of money that you want to spend per day.  You set your own price cap during the ad setup.  This price cap can be altered at any time throughout the campaign as long as it stay above the $1 minimum.

Now comes a big decision for your campaign - Do you use a Pay Per Click strategy (when a user clicks), or do you want to pay for impressions (displays).

1. A PPC strategy is you paying for every time a user clicks on your ad
2. Impression payment is for every certain amount of impressions or ad displays. You are not charged for any clicks

There are some best practice guides to decide.  Read what Facebook has to say: Facebook Payment Guide

• Review and Analyze your Ad

Once you put an ad into place, Facebook has an internal analytics tracker that you can use to track who is looking at your ad, who is clicking on your ad, what pages bring them to the ad, etc. It works much like a typical analytics tracker except it is somewhat dumbed down.  The analyzing is very clean cut and doesn't go TOO far into details.

Facebook has done a great job of making the advertising process easy for businesses to use.  I also think small businesses could really take advantage of a program like this because you could have a fixed cost if you wish.

photo courtesy of allfacebook.com

Share and Get the Most Out of Your Online Documents with iPaper

iPaper from Scribd.com is a great way to display documents online without having to download.  It can also make you money

iPaper is a service tool that should have came into existance a loooong time ago.  Have you ever visited multiple sites looking for reports or research documents and been really annoyed when you had to download each one?  Well I have. First and foremost, iPaper from Scribd.com solves that problem.  iPaper allows you to display documents on a webpage in rich media format.  It is a rich document format (adobe flash) built for the web.

Because iPaper documents are in rich media format, they can be viewed in multiple operating systems including Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc.  Beforehand, certain word documents that were made with Microsoft were restricted from download with Mac users that didn't have the Microsoft software.  Visit the website to learn more of the technical qualifiers - Scribd iPaper website

No More Annoying Downloads

For web visitors, this tool eliminates the annoying downloading processes and messages that they must encounter before reading a document.  The document is placed in clear view on the website and the tool even allows you to turn pages, much like a PDF document...but without the PDF download.

What Doc. Formats can iPaper convert to Rich Format?

• Adobe PDF (pdf)
• Adobe Postscript (.ps)
• Microsoft Word (.docx, .doc)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx)
• Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
• Open Office Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
• Open Office Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
• Open Office Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
• Plain Text (.txt)
• Rich Text Format (.rtf)

Make Money with iPaper

iPaper features a tool that you allows you to post your documents to the net on your own sites and others if they want to share your work.  iPaper has the ability to input advertisements much like those seen in Google AdSense in between the pages of your document.  Of course the ads featured are meant to be relevant and if the user were to click on the ads you would receive some of the royalties.  Now iPaper can make you money just by you sharing your knowledge.  If you build many how-to-guides, iPaper is a great tool to implement on your website.  It will make the process for your users easier and can even make you some money along the way.

Check out the video Below to learn more:

Photo courtesy of thesacredweb.net

A Quick Beginners Guide to Google AdSense

Google AdSense - Quick Guide on How You can Make Money with Google AdSense

Google AdSense is an advertising service offered by Google.  On the surface level, Google Adsense places relevant ads sponsored by Google onto your web pages.  These ads act as Pay Per Click links and you (the web owner) are rewarded royalties whenever a user clicks on the Google Ad.

As a site owner you are not in charge of the Ad content themselves.  Google decides which ads are relevant to your web pages and you determine where you would like to place those ads.  Depending on the structure of your website these ads can be customized to be visually appealing with the rest of your content. 

• Size, color and placement ARE in your control.

• Content is not - The content is controlled by the advertiser and sometimes Google.

As far as the layout of the ad is concerned there are a variety of options.  You can use banner ads of various sizes - these will appear much like any of the other banner ads you see out on the web.

• Banner Ads of Various SIzes
• Skyscraper Ad Layout - Ads on the sides and/or navigation tabs of your site - Can be generic list of links, or a single ad in large picture form
• Button Text Layout - Just a small box with a simple ad description and link
• AdSense AdLinks layout - AdLinks are small lists compiled in one box that contain a keyword or phrase link.

How do you get Google AdSense Ads on your site?

The process is very simple.  You register your website with Google AdSense.  You can do this by visiting Google AdSense Website.  Once you register, you will receive HTML code to implement onto your web pages.

The process can be done by anyone with basic web/HTML knowledge.  Once you add the code to your website, all you have to do is monitor and evaluate the visual effect the ads have on your site.  Other than that, you just sit back and make money off of relevant ads that Google produces for you.  It sounds too good to be true but that is how it works.

If you have a high volume of web traffic, Google AdSense can make you a lot of money.

Where does the Money Come From?

The Google AdSense tool is an online advertising network.  The advertisements are paid for by the website (ad owners) themselves.  Meaning =  Marriott Hotels uses Google Pay Per Click ad service and they target specific keywords - like - Cheap Hotels Chicago.  If your website is a website that reviews Chicago hotels, there is a good chance that the Marriott ad will be selected for your AdSense ads display.  Marriott has bid a certain amount on this keyword.  Let's say they bid $3 for this keyword and they are the highest bidder.  Chances are Google will place the Marriott ad on your site that deals directly with Chicago hotels.  Once a user clicks on the Ad, Marriott owes Google $3 for that click.  You then receive a share from that $3.

Tracking your AdSense Performance

There are two different channels that allow you to track your AdSense program.

1. You can click on the navigation bar within your AdSense profile that says "Channels"  from channels click on "web channels."  Within the input field, type in your website homepage.  Now you can use the Google AdSense tracking tool to monitor your AdSense campaign.

     2. You can select "user defined channels."  This allows you to track ads per sections of your website           and also allows you to track ads on multiple websites with one profile.

Fields Within an AdSense Report

AdSense will run reports for you on a daily, weekly, monthly, etc. basis.  You can run reports at any time with any time frame in mind.  If you want to see the results of your AdSense campaign from Monday to Thursday, you can.  Just choose the Monday through Thursday field within your report calendar and Google will run the report for you. 

The fields within your report

Date - Displays the AdSense data from the current date

Channel - Shows the name of your AdSense channel

Impressions - Displays the number of AdSense impressions(on-site displays) you have had

Clicks - Number of Clicks registered

Click Frequency - Number of AdSense clicks vs. AdSense impressions

Effective CPM - Calculated costs per 1,000 impressions.  Your earnings/1000

Earnings - Displays your current AdSense earnings

AdSense Search

Google AdSense gives you the option of placing a Google search toolbar on your website.  This toolbar is mildly customizable and can be a great additive to your site.  Google also gives you the option of keeping the search results on YOUR website instead of redirecting the user to google.com.  Once a visitor uses the search engine there can be more AdSense ads within the search results.  Which creates a new sub-channel of advertising for your AdSense program.

There are rules!

Google does not allow you to advertise the ads themselves.  Meaning = You cannot write "Support us by clicking on these ads" next to your AdSense ads.

photo courtesy of Google.com

AffSpy - Speed Dating in the World of Online Affiliate Marketing

AffSpy - An Affiliate Marketing Search Engine that Relies on Relevancy and Quality - Seek Out Advertising Partners with the Most Potential.

AffSpy makes finding affiliate marketing partners easy and fast.  So let's say that you are looking to find someone to advertise on your website or you want to advertise on another website.  In the past you would most likely use Google and your internal knowledge of your industry to find other website's to partner up with.  The process of determining your partner was not that difficult.  When you found one that you deemed as relevant, you would contact them and ask them their pricing strategy.  The rest of the details were worked out in the final deal and eventually your ad was placed on their site their ad was placed on yours.  If a company was looking to find multiple partners for affiliate marketing the process took a lot of time. 

AffSpy claims that it is changing all of that! It claims to be the game changer in terms of internet affiliate marketing.

Their service allows you to utilize their search engine to find your most valuable partners.  Let's say you are an online DVD store and you want to advertise the new American Pie DVD on college populated sites.  You type in college radio and the AffSpy engine provides you with a list of options that are relevant your search phrase. Once listed - you receive the following:

• The payout for the leads that you drive to their site

• What they can do for you in terms of creative = the limitations you have

• A link to their landing page

• An official affiliate rating

Check out the AffSpy homepage for a more detailed description of what they offer: Affspy Website

Marketing on Amazon with Clickriver

How Clickriver Works and How You Can use it to Market to Amazon Surfers

Before I describe what Clickriver is, you must remember that 1 in every 3 internet users visit Amazon to do a little online shopping.  Which means that Amazon is a place to go for people that are just "searching around."  Although Google is the primary destination for web surfers that are just "surfing," one can not count out Amazon as a major "surfing" alternative.  Users often visit Amazon to compare prices and get an idea or review on a product. If someone wants to find a new toaster for their kitchen, they may turn to Amazon to compare prices and models. 

With Google AdWords, companies can bid on certain keywords in hopes of getting highly rated impressions on Google's in-organic search results.  These are called Pay Per Click ads and work much like ad banners on a website in terms of billing.

Clickriver thought**** since a lot people utilize Google for Pay Per Click ads, why couldn't these also be used on the Amazon search platform?  Clickriver is just that.  A Pay Per Click service that makes it easy to advertise on Amazon.com

1. Set up an account

2. Set up your budget

3. Select your target keywords and create text for your ad

4. Submit your credit card information

5. Analyze your click thru rates and determine your ROI

Clickriver

Clickriver is a great way to market your products/services on Amazon and it works because it makes the process simple for the user.

The only problem with the Clickriver ad placements is what I call "knowledgeable consumer users" KCU.  With Google AdWords and Clickriver you are charged for the amount of times a web user clicks on your ad.  Although a lot of people DO make purchases on the internet, there are a lot of people that are just looking to learn more about a product - product research with no intent of actually buying in the moment.  A KCU may click on your ad but they are not going to buy your product, they just want to know more about it.  So it comes down to ROI.  Is a Pay Per Click ad making you money in the long run.  Meaning... does the amount of money you make of your purchases from the ads outweigh the costs.

Clickriver is a simple and easy to understand service that can be beneficial if you monitor it consistently.  Also, the service would be very useful for large inventory sellers.

Clickriver is actually run under Amazon's search division called A9.  Here is a guidelines tutorial featured on Clickriver - Clickriver Guidelines