7 Marketing Blog Posts You Might Not Have Heard Of
Posted on 11. Aug, 2010 by Marketing in Marketing, SEO, Web Design, blogging, marketing sydney
As we recently wrote on our top blog posts, I thought I would find some of our favourite, but lesser known, posts about Marketing in Australia and post them here for you all to read. You can read about marketing all you like on websites like B&T, Marketing Mag and Mumbrella, but these blogs are the ones that offer unique and interesting insight outside of the mainstream.
Why the media love the Sex Party
Written Bret Treasure over at Free Beer, this is a witty look at Australia’s favourite party. Talking about cynicism, idealism and boredom in the media, this post hits the nail on the head over the political process, in the media, in Australia, especially in the lead up to an election.
More Healthy advertising Needed for McDonalds?
An interesting look at the marketing of McDonalds. McDonald’s has recently taken up a lot of space at Customs House at Circular Quay in Sydney. The playground is part of the new McDonald’s campaign ‘inner child’. The Defectors Blog is a good one to browse when you are feeling low. With their aim to “REVOLUTIONISE MARKETING and change the way we interact with the new empowered and “connected consumer,”” how can you not want to read what they are thinking?
Foursquare in Sydney Australia
Some interesting test ran by Social Media News into the popularity of Foursquare amongst users in Sydney at several locations in Sydney. They found that whilst foursquare is still relatively absent from the majority of the population in Sydney, Its clear Foursquare is getting high usage from Media professionals and business workers.
Applying the Four P’s of Marketing to AdWords
A great post by Reload Media on why you should get back to basics with your adwords campaign. Using the example of an Acoustic Guitar sale, they show how you can cover the four P’s in Google Adwords. They claim that the trick with Search Marketing is to create ads that possess an even balance of creativity and detail about the advertised product/service.
Is it Direct Mail or Junk Mail? Analysis of an inner city mailbox
It seems Chris Maloney is a spirit brother of ours, because his views on Junk Mail could have come from this blog in itself. As we have posted before, what is the point of posting something that is just going to go bin-bound. Over a preiod of one month, Chris received 25% of it was addressed to people who no longer live here and 50% of the mail received was unaddressed. Teh most painful thing about this waste of money is that it takes only a few more minutes of thought and only a small percentage more in costs to make this marketing work! We are with you Chris!
Are Facebook Ads the most effective advertising there is?
Echoing one of our own posts on the use of social media in marketing, Charlie and Business2 looks at a case study of Facebook marketing and how it worked for him. Claiming that Facebook.com is already breaking even on this advertising stream, Charlie showed how Facebook marketing can be targetted and very cost effective. Another great tit bit is that Facebook is not just for kids, as there are more people using it over 40 than under 20.
Crisis Management Means Doing The Right Thing
Brendon over at Tailored goes through some local problems with a positive steroids test at their surf lifesaving club. Brendon does a great job of using the case study to show how anyone can crisis manage just by acknowledging the issue and taking steps to make things right. It seems that even BP could have learned from Brendon.
Our top 9 Blog Posts
Posted on 11. Aug, 2010 by Marketing in Marketing, SEO, blogging
Seeing as our blog has gone from strength to strength, and now has a fairly strong readership, I thought I would show you, and summarise, our top 9 blog posts;
Online Advertising Comparison – SMH.com.au/Fairfax
We decided to create an ongoing series of posts on the choices available to marketers for online advertising. This post was one of the first we produced and was one of the longest. We also did posts on Stumbleupon and a few other online advertising options. We are still waiting on a response from Reddit, Digg, and anyone from Google Adwords. SMH were the first to get back to us on what it means to be an online medium in the advertising market, and they were certainly one of the most thorough.
Evaluating Content Sharing Methods
We took a look at a few different content sharing methods, and how to use them as a marketer. It was a broad overview, but it seems to have been quite timely for some readers, as it is our second most read post in the last 6 months.
Tough Mudder – A Marketing Case Study
Tough Mudder is every action man’s fantasy. It is a grueling seven mile race through muddy hills, cold water and burning bales of Hay. What started out as part of the Harvard Business School’s Business Plan contest is swiftly becoming a rising star of endurance races in America. During the Business Plan contest, judges felt that getting 500 people to put themselves through hell was a little optimistic. However in our post we walked through the things that really worked for Touch Mudder and how other marketers can learn.
Hidden Pizza Restaurant – A Wasted Opportunity
This was our biggest and most controversial series of posts. We still think it was a wasted opportunity both for Sensis and the pizza market in general. At the moment we are working on our own version, soon to be released. Most of the companies we work for are pulling back on their Yellow Pages advertising basically because of the reasons we outlined in this post.
A Comparison of Social Advertising – Digg, Facebook, Reddit
This was the kick start to our posts on social marketing and how you can use it for any business. Although we did not get ANY comments from the media we studied, we did dig up a lot of case studies. We found enough data to convince us that social media marketing can work and is great value for money. In the same way that businesses are sceptical of setting up a blog, or really starting any conversation with their customers, they are sceptical of social media. They really shouldn’t be.
Free High PR Directory Search Engine
This is a tool we built for us and our clients to search over 400 directories and find the best ones to list in. This is not just from a SEO point of view, but also from a traffic point of view. There are some directories that now give us over a third of all our traffic. As long as the directory is in your niche, and targets the keywords well, there is no reason why you should not try to list in them. We would question the value of spending time listing in more than 10 or 20, especially those that are not ranked well
Marketing Trends for 2010
We wrote a great overview for the marketing trends for this year. Covering mobile marketing, keyword inflation, smartphone apps etc, we went over the lot. One of the things that is certainly coming true this year is adwords cost creep. One of the major reasons for advertisers moving to other media is that the cost of advertising on Google is become prohibitive to all those without very deep pockets. We are hoping that by the end of the year Google will have a solution, but for now, it is just not worth looking at for most advertisers.
8 ways law firms can use social media
We were lucky because this post got picked up by a could of law blogs and it was promoted around the web. Obviously we can actually write well. It also proved the old addage that there is nothing like a list, at least as far as blog posts go. The main aim for the post was to show that even law firms can use social media in their marketing mix. Also social media does not have to be about facebook and getting friends. Linkedin can be used for recruitment and Digg can be used to track industry trends.
10 ways plumbers can improve their direct mail flyers
This post was in response to a swathe of plumbers that started knocking on our door, not just to offer to unblock our drains, but because they are working in a competitive market, and they want to increase their market share. There are a lot of things people can do to increase the conversion rate of their marketing, not just the usual test, test, test. The main thing Plumbers need to do is try something different from their competitors. There are loads of plumbers out there trying to get their slice of the same pie. The best thing you can do is invent your own pie and fish in a different pond.
Google and the 10 Commandments of SEO
Posted on 29. Jul, 2010 by Marketing in SEO, Web Design
We thought we would throw together our own version of the 10 commandments of SEO. There are a few versions of the SEO commandments around, but we thought we could do a better job. Firstly we wanted to keep to the original script of the commandments, with easy to understand and critical laws that can be passed down through generations. If I had had my way, the main picture above would have had me coming down from an Apple store with two giant iSideTables in my hands.
These commandments also have a bias towards those guidlines created by Google, partly because they are readily available, but mainly because Google makes up about 500% of seo attention at the moment. We tried to pick the 10 that were critical for the performance of your website, not just the ones that we all do, like link building, that are nice. Our 10 commandments are;
- Thou shalt not link to bad guys
- Thou shalt not keyword Stuff
- Thou shalt not cloak pages
- Thou shalt not steal content
- Thou shalt not use hidden links
- Thou shalt create original content
- Thou shalt use meta tags
- Thou shalt use Robots.txt
- Thou shalt link sparingly
- Thou shalt provide a site-map
We also had a few commandments that got left over, and may just end up getting moved to our version of the sermon on the mount. Maybe that one will start with something like “Blessed are the bloggers…” Here are some of the things we could have included;
- Thou shalt have clear page hierarchy
- Thou shalt be accessible
- Thou shalt check for broken links
- Thou shalt use pretty URLs
- Thou shalt cross browser test
- Thou shalt optimize load times
- Thou shalt make pages primarily for users
- Thou shalt not spam the search engines
- Thou shalt avoid “doorway” pages
If there are any more out there, we would love to hear them. Maybe one day we will rewrite the bible from the perspective of search engines. Perhaps it could start with
“In the beginning TBL merged TCP/IP, hypertext and DNS to create the world wide web, and he saw that it was good.”
Maybe Moses is AOL and Jesus is Google, I don’t know. Perhaps someone else has a better idea of how this tortured metaphor fits together.
Top 11 SEO methods for plumbers
Posted on 27. Jul, 2010 by Marketing in How To, SEO, Tutorials
Over the last two weeks we have had dozens of plumbers ask us for SEO advice on growing their business through their website. Plumbing is a highly competitive business, particularly online. The top plumbing business, for the search “Sydney Plumbers”, on Google has a PR of 6, over 4500 indexed links, and has a domain authority of 63.
What SEO methods do plumbers use increase their traffic and increase their sales leads? It is the same as any other highly competitive industry.First you need to know you should be focussing on quality traffic. That means you are looking to attract visitors that are looking to hire you right now.
SEO is about getting people to spend money with you, NOT your competitors. To that end, chasing after people looking for “Sydney Plumbers” may not be the best way to go. Your primary goal should be to drive people to search for you, find you and then spend money with you.
You need to know your tools. We use the following;
Google Keyword Tool – You will use this to find low-competition/high traffic keywords.
OpenSite Explorer – You will use this to find the highest ranked AND most relevany pages linking to your competitors
Directory Critic -This is where you will find the most relevant quality directories for articles and links.
Yahoo – This is a much better search engine for finding links, who is linking to you and your competitors. Google Webmaster tools are ok, but for some reason they don’t list all of the links.
- Use Google Analytics. If you outsource your SEO functions, make sure they give you a full detailed report, or at least access to your analytics data. This will allow you to see where you are getting the most traffic from, what is working for you, and what keywords most people are using. If anything it will open your eyes to the volume of traffic that can come from the most random places.
- Spread your keywords/look for the long tail. Everyone is competing for “sydney plumbers”. I am not saying abandon this completely, but start thinking outside the box. There are more people searching locally for “Hot Water Service” (12000+) than for “Sydney Plumbers” (~9000). Also there will be people who are more likely to buy when they are searching for “Emergency Hot Water Plumber”. Also would you rather do business with people looking for a “Cheap Plumber” or “luxury home plumber” or “best quality plumber sydney“?
- Build Content. This means you have to look at building up your quality content around lots of related keywords. I would suggest building a blog. You could write a few “how to” articles. Once you have written them, wait 2 weeks, and then submit them to the article directories listed in Directory Critic.
- Follow these rules; Use unique interesting title tags for each page. Do the same for the meta description.
- Use Video. Firstly, few plumbing businesses do use video, so you will stand out. Secondly, it is a great way to bridge the gap between those that do and don’t trust your business.
- Don’t look for high PR links only – Use the Open Site Explorer and Yahoo to find out where the most authoritative links are coming into your competitors. Try to get links in relevant directories. You don’t have to chase the top PR websites on the web, because not only is that unrealistic, but you will probably miss out on a lot of other places that could give you quality traffic.
- Strive for publicity. Sponsor a local soccer team, donate to the local hospital, hold a “How to change your water heater” event for old people. Write information that can be used by the press and local media. The bottom line is, by doing all of this a) you will get a lot of people linking to your website and b) it will raise your profile in the local area.
- Get links in sparingly. Only initiate link exchanges and directory submissions from website that are highly relevant and have been indexed for a long time. If you do use a reciprocal link exchange read this first. Avoid buying or selling links. Pretty much the only place you should buy a link from is the Yahoo directory. After that you might want to get a premium placement in a plumbing directory online. Everything else is a waste, until you know where your traffic is coming from.
- Control the number of outbound links on your pages and on pages where you place your links, avoid link-farms, links to gambling, pills, etc. If you want a rule, never link to other plumbers in your country, only overseas. Only link to websites related to home improvement or plumbing. Only link to websites that are ranked on the firsst 3 pages of the search engines.
- Spend money on other things, like Facebook/Twitter, before Yellow Pages. The yellow pages rarely rank top for any of the keywords you would want. Few people actually read the books any more, and there are better ways to spend your money. If you want a cheap alternative to PPC, look at social media, or having a Facebook page, and spending some money on PPC. Also think about using Twitter actively to find clients.
- Get a Google Places listing, and focus on improving that. Firstly your location matters in Google places, and that can’t be faked. Secondly it relies on a lot of data sources to see where your address is, so every time you place a link back to your website, make sure you put your telephone number and physical address down.
Want some more great reading about SEO for Plumbers? Here is some great information about the SEO Success pyramid, which has a great, in depth, breakdown of the things you should be looking for.
Creative Billboard Inspiration – Practical Design Principles
Posted on 20. Jul, 2010 by Marketing in Advertising, How To, Tutorials
As creative people we would all love to be able to design and execute a billboard like the Kill Bill ad above. However, the bottom line is most of us either don’t have the budget, don’t have the time or don’t have the brand. Billboards can be a very potent marketing material that will attract a lot of attention, create a lasting impression and allow you to convey something on a large canvas.
In Sydney a billboard like the one on Fairford Rd, Bankstown (operated by ooh) would get a reach of 60,000 and a frequency of 6, meaning that your message will certainly get across and be reinforced in a large audience. One thing is important to remember, no marketing campaigns should be executed in isolation. If you are sending out a message using a billboard, you need to back this up with the same message in a wide variety of other media. Because billboards are passive, you can’t rely on the customer to pick up the phone right away, you need to make sure you are catching them in a range of other areas.
Billboards are one large canvas, and vision trumps all other senses. Tell the story with an image first, and then worry about the copy second.
One image one point
Most billboards are by the side of a road, so you will have about 5 seconds to get your message across, slightly more if they are stuck in traffic. Don’t get stuck on trying too much copy, too many ideas, or too many calls to action. These days a brand and a web address is the most you should be aiming for. The McDonald’s billboard above is a clear indication of the power of all of our design principals.
Be memorable and generate curiosity
The two billboards above are both by search engines, aimed at trying to get you to search for these terms online. The top billboard was created for Google for their recruitment drive. The bottom one was created for Ask.com’s search engine. The bottom one caused enough people to want to search for the term, XKCD, a geeky comic, jumped on the bandwagon and used SEO to ambush the terms.
The bottom line is, people don’t have a lot of time. You need to catch their attention, be memorable, and get them to take action. Using search terms like the ones above are a good way, but they might not suit every brand.
Its all about type
Once you have your imagery lined up, you need to get your words right. We would suggest 10 words, at the most, including your brand and your call to action.
The American Psycho billboard above uses a lot more type, but that is the point. They want to suck you into the call to action at the bottom.
Use contrast
You can use contrasting imagery, or just contrasting colours to prove a point. Either way be bold, make your point stand out.
9/10 People Like Brands on Facebook
Posted on 16. Jul, 2010 by Marketing in Marketing, Social Media
A new survey conducted by Exact Seek has found that 90 percent of people using Facebook have become “fans” of a brand. This virtually proves without a doubt that a balanced, multi channel, integrated marketing program is what every business should be engaging in.
 |
With success stories like Rita’s Italian Ice how can any business not look at social media as a cost effective method for building their business. What Lorel Marketing Group, the team behind Rita’s, did well was they integrated their online marketing, including their social media stratagy, with their offline.
Facebook Advertising – Find Managers
Posted on 12. Jul, 2010 by Marketing in Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, marketing sydney
Facebook, and for that matter MySpace too, has the stigma of being just for kids and people who have just had a baby/got engaged/married etc. However, its reach has spread beyond its college campus roots of and more and more “C-Level” users are signing on.
We did some analysis of the users of Facebook, and came up with two interesting groups of users;
Facebook marketing group A
Estimated reach: 10,000 people
* who live in Australia
* who live in New South Wales
* between the ages of 25 and 50 inclusive
* business, marketing, sales, marketing sales, management accountant, entrepreneur, marketing manager, accountant, technical support, company director or account manager
* who have graduated from university
Facebook marketing group B
Estimated reach 25,280 people
* who live in Australia
* between the ages of 30 and 50 inclusive
* company director, director, director human resources, director operations, director marketing, director sales, ceo, managing director or managing partner
Both of these groups have a suggested CPC bid of 0.62 – 0.87 USD. That means for less than a dollar per click, you can get your brand in front of some of the highest level business people in Australia. This is great value for money, especially when you see that Google has an average CPC for keywords like management and marketing well over $2.
The reach is certainly nothing to be sniffed at, however is pales in comparison to LinkedIn‘s reach of 117,778 users at the same seniority. However the downside is the suggested CPC bid is $4.93 – $5.81. At a 1% conversion rate, that means a $500 campaign will net you barely one strong lead through LinkedIn, but may net you as much as 8 leads through Facebook. Also, the added benefit of Facebook is you can link up to your “fan” page and start interacting with your targets instantly.
The statistics for Facebook marketing become more and more interesting the more you dig into it. Looking for software engineers based in Sydney?
Estimated reach
2,680 people
* who live in Australia
* who live in Sydney
* who like software, software engineer, software developer or software architect
Social network marketing is becoming more and more slick and mainstream, Colgate used social media as a major part of their launch strategy for their Wisp product.
Are there any more social networking marketing successes out there?
Pictures worth a thousand words – Direct Mail rule #1
Posted on 25. Jun, 2010 by Marketing in Marketing, direct mail
The is really only one rule to direct mail pieces that surprise, and that is creativity. We get hundreds of direct mail pieces every week, and they all look the same, are written in the same boring copy, and have the same SCREAMING offers on the front.
There really is only one secret to great direct mail, and that is to be creative. Here are two quick steps you can take that will help improve your direct mail response.
- Surprise Broca – Brocas area is a part of the brain that deals with anticipation. It is a hard wired section of the brain that would normally block out anything that is anticipated.
If you can’t get through this section of the brain, your message will get tuned out. Roy Williams coined the phrase when looking at the anatomy of a marketing campaign. The quick tips he suggested were,
Avoid words that do not contribute toward a more vivid or colourful mental image.
Frosting. Replacing common, predictable phrases with unexpected, colourful ones.
Seussing. Invent words. Read a Dr. Seuss book and you will see how a man who invented words became a best-selling author.
Ignore the details, exaggerate the colour, and remove the black. - Write in Style. Poor English, common boring sentances, they all make for a bin-ward bound Direct Mail piece.Write like you mean what you are saying. Write like you are entering a creative writing competition.
How To Save Disappearing Brands
Posted on 22. Jun, 2010 by Marketing in Branding, How To, Marketing, Social Media
 |  |  |
24/7 Wall Street, via The Huffington Post has written a list of 10 brands that will disappear by next year. Given that is only 6 months away, we thought we would give some of those companies some advice as to how they can turn their company around, if they dare.
Readers Digest
Citing some dismal figures, HuffPo states that, as is the trend with other newsosaurs, the end is probably nigh. Reader’s Digest may have been at one time the most widely read magazine in the world, or at least in doctors surgeries. It emerged from bankruptcy in February with $525 million in exit financing, and Readers Digest cut the number of issues it publishes a year from twelve to ten. It also cut its circulation guarantee for advertisers to 5.5 million copies from 8 million.
It looks like it could be death by a thousand cuts for the iconic brand. However largly this commentary does not take into account the Readers Digest online brands. Alexa places rd.com almost in the top 1000 websites in the US, and certainly one of the most dominant for females over 45. Also Readers Digest has one of the widest and largest distribution chains of any publishing house in the world. All is not lost, and Readers Digest is definitely not on the way out. So here are 5 quick things Readers digest could do to recover some value for their brand.
- Open up the website to readers. Readersdigest.com offers no way to interact with other readers or with the magazine. No comments, no forum, nothing. How can they claim to want to engage readers when there is no way readers can interact with the magazine.
- Online first, then offline. The content online is virtually identical to the offline content. So why not publish on the web first, and then offline. If they created content online, then could open it up to discussion, allow the most interesting content to float to the surface, and then publish that. This would mean the offline content has the most interesting articles, with feedback from readers, with links to more content online.
- Exploit local advertising. All the ads online are served by Sensis and Google. or, apparently, they can serve their own ads. All of this is actually really hard to tell because the advertising section of the website is woeful. It seems, local advertising in the printed form is managed by the local marketing group. Why seperate them? Why not allow local businesses, or at least region specific ones, to advertise online and offline? Advertising integrated to content could be the same on the website as in the magazine.
- Increase circulation. When a magazine or paper cuts circulation, that is the beginning of the end. It would be better to give away the magazine than to sell less. There are plenty of places that Readers Digest could expand both content and distribution into, including vending machines. Imagine buying a lemonade for $2 and then grabbing the Readers Digest for $4. What about allowing more guest writers etc.
- Be a content brand first. The website is co branded with a few other websites too, and rdadvertising.com.au also points to The Discovery Channel website. But what about expanding content from the magazine onto other media? Each month they could have a hot content section on the local breakfast show etc.
Blockbuster, Inc.
Was the national leader in the video rental business for nearly two decades. However, as ever, all the directors had to do was take a great company and do nothing. Now it faces competition from Redbox and NetFlix. Blockbuster has more than 6,000 stores, again distribution is a strength, so it is hard to imagine that the company could disappear. However if online movie distribution does one tenth of what it is supposed to, then the physical stores will be dead. In order to save themselves, here are 5 quick things they can do;
- Shake up their board. At least one activist investor is trying to change the way Blockbuster operate. The CEO already covets Netflix. What the hell is their problem? If I was a shareholder I would be so pissed off at the current board that they have done nothing give direction to Blockbuster.
- Start offering downloads, open up OnDemand. Blockbuster already have digital movie rentals on demand, but it appears it is only through TiVo. In Australia iTunes is the only place where you can get movies to download legally. Netflix is the dominant competitor in streaming movies. Why not offer a place where people can download movies legally?
- Have another look at your core. Blockbuster claim that their core is “family-oriented mom who is not as willing to figure out how to go to a console or a computer and load a movie into the queue.” That dated statement is a perfect example of why Blockbuster are struggling. Even Readers Digest can see there is a market online for over 45 females. My nan watches TV on the internet now. The techno-illiterate are a diminishing group of people. Maybe their core should be “family-oriented parent who is too busy to go to the store,” or even better “Busy entertainment seekers”.
- Start using social media. How hard is it to get these companies to start a discussion? Movie fans are fairly die hard. Why not allow movie viewers to start discussing and recommending movies online. Why not give users the tools to start fan clubs, movie clubs etc through their website?
- Integrate online and offline data. The Netflix prize was all about publicity and recommendations. Why not allow other users/members to do the same. Why not have digital displays in stores for the top titles showing what other members have recommended?
BP
We blogged about how the oil leak would not damage BP’s Brand. That was before the estimates of leakage moved up to 100000 barrels per day and they had spent $2 billion on the clean up. The situation for BP has gone from dire to catastrophic, however even 247wallstreet.com admits that it will not end the company. More that BP will be broken into smaller pieces. We actually believe a break up would be a good thing for the company, because it would allow profitable pieces to prosper on their own. However, if BP wanted to avoid a break up, here are 4 quick suggestions for how they could do it.
- Open Source/Crowd Source the clean up. This includes getting Kevin Costner involved which apparently they have already done. The problem with the clean up initially was they kept all the information too close to themselves, and they distanced themselves from taking active action. It has taken them nearly four months to get to this stage, and we are still no closer to fixing the hole in the pipe. Crowd Sourcing solutions and execution teams would not only have given them an answer faster, it would have certainly given them Kevin Costner sooner too.
- Fix the Gulf of Mexico Fast. The faster the oil is cleaned up, the less it will cost and the better BP will look. If they wait and wait, and deny like Exxon did, it will cost them more in the long run.
- Get back to being environmentally friendly/diversify. Their new CEO has admitted that BP was in the business of oil. Almost 10 years of work building a multiple energy source company was let go to waste when he became CEO. They were once the leading manufacturers of solar panels in the world, and still are one of the top. It should be time to maximise that.
- Sell off retail. Retail sales make up a very small percentage of revenue. It probably gives BP a good steady flow of cash into the company. However it is not their core business. They have already branded some of their stores AMPM and other brands. Now would be the best time to offload it.
What do you think? How else can these companies save themselves?
Online Advertising Comparison – StumbleUpon
Posted on 15. Jun, 2010 by Marketing in Advertising, Marketing, Social Media
|  |
This is the second part in our ongoing series comparing online advertising, with a focus on social media. Last time we received a prompt reply from the Sydney Morning Herald, this time round we have spoken to StumbleUpon.com.
StumbleUpon uses ratings from its users to create opinions on website quality. When a user “stumbles”, they see pages that other stumblers have recommended and they can either like or dislike the content. This helps users discover great content not normally found with a search engine, with a view that poor content will be sifted out.
StumbleUpon users can find other each other and content by searching tags, such as “marketing”. Advertisers can capitalise on these “personal” search recommendations by including their content with the normally submitted content. Advertising on StumbleUpon is equivalent to purchasing traffic within your chosen demographic.
 |
Outside of the US, StumbleUpon is relatively unused. However, StumbleUpon is one of the older social news websites, with over 10 million active users, and depending on who you listen to, they either make up 25% of share content, or just over 10%. These are some impressive stats for any media, with 5.4 billion website recommendations a year and 118% growth in users since 2009. The average Stumbler views 25 websites per day, which is a higher level of engagement than most traditional news websites.
Advertisers on StumbleUpon can expect everything that is standard in online advertising. The cost per click is low, at $.05, the starting cost is virtually zero, there is no CPM because you only pay for clicks, and segmentation is easy, using tags and user demographics. Some advertisers have bought 100 clicks for just $5, others 1150 clicks for $20, which makes it far cheaper CPC than most Google keywords.
What makes StumbleUpon stand out, is also what makes it a less than perfect fit for most advertisers. The volume of users and the number of views/clicks each advertiser can expect make it great for publishers or news websites aiming to sell advertising or rope in new readers. One publisher claimed a 3% conversion rate from one StumbleUpon campaign, which is still higher than a lot of other advertising options. However, as opposed to Google, where you can segment by search terms like “Cheap Hairdryers”, it is hard to see how stumblers looking for hair styling tips will linger on a website selling hairdryers, unless they are spectacular hairdryers.
In order to maximise the impact of advertising on StumbleUpon, businesses should focus on unique and interesting stories that are part of their business. Promoting a new, hot, interesting product with a great story is going to go a lot further than trying to sell directly to the stumblers. In that way, StumbleUpon should be viewed as a tool to help build community, promote a brand and be a part of your PR package.
The analytics side of advertising is again as sophisticated as any other media. Advertisers can see what the results of the campaign have been and how the website has been spread “organically” to other stumblers.
We asked the following questions to Katie Gray, Marketing Communications Manager at StumbleUpon, and we received the following answers, which are here unedited.
CD:Why should someone run an advertising campaign with StumbleUpon?
SU: Because we drive so much traffic online, StumbleUpon is, hands down, the most efficient way to get your content directly in front of the targeted audience you’re looking for. Because StumbleUpon and its ads platform are both so unique, here’s a brief overview of the StumbleUpon product experience:
StumbleUpon is a one-click recommendation engine. When a user signs up for our service, they tell us what they’re interested in by choosing from a list of 500+ topics. As users click the Stumble! Button, we take them to new and interesting web sites that they can then rate positively (thumb-up) or negatively (thumb-down). We take this feedback as well as ratings from like-minded users in our community into account as we take users to more sites that we predict they’ll like. Over time, we develop a deep profile of each user’s likes and dislikes and our sophisticated recommendation technology serves up content that is directly personalized towards them and their interests.
StumbleUpon ads look just like any of the pages served to a user – we send our users directly to these sponsored landing pages, so there’s no “click-through” required. Since an advertiser is targeting potential customers by their interest in a relevant topic area, our users see advertising content they want to see. Advertisers don’t need any banner creative, they aren’t restricted by character limits or size requirements, and they can let their content speak for itself. No additional effort beyond having a web site is required to advertise with StumbleUpon, and virtually any page with rich and engaging information can be a potential StumbleUpon ad. And because the advertised content is so seamlessly integrated into the rest of the stumbling experience, our users tend to be highly engaged with sponsored content they like.
We also offer extensive analytics showing advertisers the total number of unique visitors resulting from an advertising campaign, including any additional organic uplift gained as a result of users sharing the advertiser’s page with others and making it go viral within our community. Advertisers can also view users’ ratings of their sites over time, see which pieces of content most resonate with site visitors, and adjust their campaigns accordingly.
What is the lowest amount someone can expect to spend?
We currently charge a flat $.05 cost per view (CPV) and we do not have a minimum spend requirement. Advertisers will find that if our users like their content, their pages will get additional organic uplift for a couple reasons. First, users often share content they’ve stumbled upon to their friends inside and outside of StumbleUpon. Second, our recommendation algorithms take into account users’ positive ratings of paid content, which surfaces this content to more and more users beyond the traffic an advertiser has paid for. We do not charge for the additional views from positive user ratings or sharing, so advertisers with popular content are rewarded with free traffic that brings down their eCPV below $.05. We have clients who spend just $5 per day, while others spend as much as $5,000 per day. Advertisers have the control to adjust the amount they want to spend per day and the flexibility to pay through either PayPal or any major credit card.
Which industry would gain, or has gained the most from advertising with StumbleUpon?
Our advertising platform is a great fit for anyone creating or driving traffic to compelling content online. The best performing content on StumbleUpon is info-rich, entertaining and informative. We work most extensively with publishers, advertising agencies and bloggers, as well as businesses in the entertainment, online retail, and service industries.
Some of our most successful advertisers promote everyday products or services, but in an entertaining way. For example, the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board ran a StumbleUpon ad campaign for GrilledCheeseAcademy.com, an interactive site showcasing grilled cheese sandwich recipes with different kinds of Wisconsin cheese. The campaign quickly went viral, and user engagement was double the level they expected. In addition, the organic traffic they received was more than double the amount of their paid traffic.
For an average campaign, or an example campaign, what would be the cost, number of impressions, and click through rate of the campaign?
We’re a unique platform, so a lot of these metrics don’t apply to us in the same way they do with more traditional online media providers. Instead of serving a banner or a text ad and hoping that people will find and click on the ad, advertisers choose how many visitors they would like to receive and we send highly qualified leads to the advertisers’ sites directly.
To illustrate the cost-effectiveness of StumbleUpon advertising compared to other forms of online advertising, imagine that you’ve created a site with a useful and engaging personal finance management tool. If you created a banner ad for placement on a popular finance site, you may pay a $50 CPM and receive, at best, a .02% CTR. With StumbleUpon, you would pay the same CPM (as every page view on StumbleUpon costs $.05) but with 100% CTR and a guarantee that users interested in your topic area would see your content. Plus, if users like your ad content, you could receive additional page views at no cost, driving your effective CPV even lower.
How closely can you target a campaign, e.g. by keywords, by articles, by categories?
You target users by topic, and then you can further narrow that field of “Stumblers” by age, gender, and location.
How do you compare to other online advertising, such as newspapers or social networking?
Our advertising model is quite unique. We don’t serve traditional advertising like banners or search links. Instead, 5% of the web pages – or “stumbles” – we show to users are paid placements. An advertiser identifies the URL they want to promote and selects relevant topics from our list. Then we insert that entire page into the “StumbleStream,” or sequence of sites the user sees when they stumble. The user lands directly on your site without having to click on a banner ad or text link. This direct serving of ads to users who are looking for cool sites relevant to their interests also makes it more likely that advertisers will engage users longer than with print advertising, especially if they develop a content-rich site as part of their advertising campaigns.
We have over 10 million registered users total, and users click the Stumble button over 20 million times each day. StumbleUpon drives the most online traffic of all social media in the U.S. and we’re 2nd globally.
Where do you see your online advertising platform going in the next year? Will you be introducing any new features?
We’re constantly innovating on our advertising platform. Our current focus is offering advertisers more targeting options to better enable them to reach more customers. Soon our advertisers will be able to either widen their targeting reach or get more granular. We’re also enhancing our data representation and analytics, giving advertisers more visibility into their campaign performance.
Creative Development is a marketing and web design agency based in Sydney.
If there are any other websites or advertising platforms you would like to see here, leave a comment below and we will see what we can do. All our comments are do-follow, so enjoy the link-love.