Paid, Owned and Earned Media - Defining Digital Strategies

If you are familiar with the concept of Owned, Earned and Paid Media you understand that Google Pay-Per-Click (PPC) can play a colossal role for your Social Media seeding campaign.

But just how much is too much?

I thought it would be interesting to share with you a study from Wordstream.com which shows the most expensive keywords in Google AdWords.

The 20 most expensive keyword categories with the highest search volume and highest costs per click, thereby netting Google the most money, are:

1.     Insurance (keywords in this category include “buy car insurance online” and “auto insurance price quotes”)
2.     Loans (keywords include “consolidate graduate student loans” and “cheapest homeowner loans”)
3.     Mortgage (keywords include “refinanced second mortgages” and “remortgage with bad credit”)
4.     Attorney (keywords include “personal injury attorney” and “dui defense attorney”)
5.     Credit (keywords include “home equity line of credit” and “bad credit home buyer”)
6.     Lawyer (“personal  injury lawyer,” “criminal defence lawyer)
7.     Donate (“car donation centres,” “donating a used car”)
8.     Degree (“criminal justice degrees online,” “psychology bachelors degree online”)
9.     Hosting (“hosting ms exchange,” “managed web hosting solution”)
10.     Claim (“personal injury claim,” “accident claims no win no fee”)
11.     Conference Call (“best conference call service,” “conference calls toll free”)
12.     Trading (“cheap online trading,” “stock trades online”)
13.     Software (“crm software programs,” “help desk software cheap”)
14.     Recovery (“raid server data recovery,” “hard drive recovery laptop”)
15.     Transfer (“zero apr balance transfer,” “credit card balance transfer zero interest”)
16.     Gas/Electricity (“business electricity price comparison,” “switch gas and electricity suppliers”)
17.     Classes (“criminal justice online classes,” “online classes business administration”)
18.     Rehab (“alcohol rehab centres,” “crack rehab centres”)
19.     Treatment (“mesothelioma treatment options,” “drug treatment centres”)
20.     Cord Blood (“cordblood bank,” “store umbilical cord blood”)

When I am asked about ROI on Social Media I like to consider that if your Earned and Owned media presences have been created and maximised, you reduce your reliance on Paid media. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t sometimes also pay for some extra attention, but it certainly means you depend less on these paid channels. And, because AdWords and other programs like it are based on an auction system, competitiveness and costs for them will continue to be driven upwards.

Generating ROI based on traffic – a simple formula

Let’s assume you are in the Real Estate industry and you want to decide between the immediacy of Pay-per-click and the long term benefits of Social Media and SEO.

You consider investing in Pay-per-click and generate immediate traffic.

If you generate about 1,000 visits a month paying $50 this equates to $50,000/month

If you invest the same amount of money across your Owned media and start to generate the same qualified traffic you have built yourself a long term asset and you can therefore amortise the investment over time.

This is an easy way to start a polemic on ROI in Owned Media versus ROI for PPC.

Which side are you on?

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John Kay, Financial Times

Get Social Media now?

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This is his answer:

“Let’s assume that you are really control everything within the website, and you are really smart SEO and you have internal supporters”

One thing to pay attention is Optimisation for speed.
It is a (slight) factor in Google’s ranking, but lots of different people have run tests and they’ve discovered that When pages are returned quicker at your website, customers end up doing more things – more purchases, more exploring, more browsing, more sign ups.
You can definetely increase ROI if you decrease your website speed or latency.
So I would try to make sure that you can make your site a little bit faster.
That’s the one thing I would pay attention to.
It can be as simple as minifying JavaScript or CSS, trying to make sure images are corrctly opmitsed and used.
All relatively simple things, but they can have big impact on a website bottom line when you think about user behaviour.
…
Also, things as simple as making sure that your internal linking structure is consistent, that you’re not dropping links off the edge os a cliff with 404 errors.
Trying to make sure that when you do make internal links, they’re good keywords but not spammy, but describe the product in a very specific descriptive way.
So, optimise for speed, try to make sure you’ve got good internal CMS practices and internal linking.
And then the last thing, if you’ve got all that in a row is I would think about Social Media Marketing.
Social Media Marketing, spreading content on Twitter, spreading content on Facebook, on Digg, Reddit, Stumble Upon…
Those can be ways to get what you want to talk about out to a wider audience.

Now how can Social Media affect SEO?

Well, if you get 100 visitors, on eof those visitors might make a blog post or might make a link, and that link could eventually flow Page Rank and send more visitors.
So a lot of people think SEO versus Social Media Marketing, and a lot of the times it makes sense to keep a holistic view and say OK, first you have to have attractive content, some reason why your website is not just a brochure – why people would want to link to your website.
To sum up, I would optimise for Speed, I would make sure your internal linkings and CM is in good shape.

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Webmaster tools is far the most underutilised tool on your web marketing arsenal.

Webmaster tools is not just essential for your SEO strategy but it can also be very very handy for your Web analysis and pre-strategy plan.  A smart strategist can use this data to improve how search engines crawl and index your site’s content but it also can understand and explore opportunities looking through SEO eyes.

Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead at Google released an excellent video about usage of Webmaster tools, enjoy.

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If you are talking about Facebook yes it can. Welcome Facebook ads.

But how much is the cost of a friend for Facebook brands?

A study by social marketing and analytics firm Webtrends found that the cost of advertising on Facebook that encourages a user to become a “fan” on the brand’s Facebook page is $1.07  (1.05 AUD).

“There are a lot of studies trying to say how much is a fan worth,” Justin Kistner, Webtrends’ senior manager of product marketing for social, “but the answer depends on the kinds of campaigns you are driving at that fan base.”

Many brands get too focused on the absolute number of their social media audience and don’t put enough value on target group relevance & engagement.

What my Social Media Team sees in the vertical industry is that a lot of them build a fan base on Facebook through discount offers and quick giveaways – but then they don’t get any brand amplification because their fan base is not looking for engagement therefore not LTV (Life Time Value). However, that’s where the real value lies, particularly when comparing CPMs for traditional online advertising with the cost efficiency of social media when done right.

With this on mind, are fans worth $1.07 each for brands?

The Wall Street Journal (Digits blog) sat down on camera with Michael Lazerow, the CEO of Buddy Media, a firm that sells software for brands that want to market on Facebook. Lazerow argued they’re worth far more. See highlights below.

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Through an application, the brand fans on Facebook could choose up to ten friends and the time desired to be printed.

The action was limited to 1000 books, which sold out in just one hour.

Created by DDB Paris, This action has the same proposal TweetNotebook. Entering your profile and paying 12 euros, the site prints a notebook using the nonsense that you’ve talked to Twitter.

I did a while ago, and works well.

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Transcription:

ADMA Forum 2010.

http://bit.ly/admaf

The Marketing industry is in transition!  That was the clear message at this year’s  ADMA Forum at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre.

“ADMA 2010 had emphasis on the ability to master multi-channel campaigns” , Rob Edwards – CEO ADMA

As the Social Media Manager for the event I was lucky enough to have a bird’s eye view as local and international visitors shared a similar theme.

A great line-up of speakers offered a wide-range of experienced and newer talents. Tim Suther (CMO – ACXIOM), Stan Rapp, Olivier Blanchard (BrandBuilder), Meaghan Burdick (Obama For America Marketing Director) led the overseas contingent while locally we were ably represented by agency experts including Jeff Richardson from The Online Circle Group, Iain McDonald from Razorfish, and Jeremy Perrot from McCann WorldGroup, and clients with real life experience including Cadbury’s Roger Sharp, Karen Ganschow from Telstra, Ed Falconiform Myer and Daniel Roberts from Woolworths .

Networking was guaranteed with the 2010 event having its biggest delegate numbers ever.  400 people attended the first day’s keynote address and more came in later.

A broad range of exhibitors from a wide variety of business and technology providers showed they understand the challenges of the transition required and are committed to making their offering as detailed and comprehensive as possible.

Lesson #1 from the ADMA Forum 2010 – Multi-Channel campaigns are becoming increasingly vital for companies determined to grow.

• Tim Suther-CMO of Axciom on his presentation (one of my favourites) Hope is not a strategy, “Not too long ago 80% of CEO’s said they deliver a superior customer experience. 8% of customer’s agreed…May I suggest a change may be necessary.”
• Roger Sharp from Cadbury and Jeff Richardson from The Online Circle went into detail outlining a crisis Cadbury went through in 2009 where consumers voiced their cause online against the brand. This forced the company to embrace the online environment with The Online Circle creating a very detailed strategy to listen and work with the online influencers to solve the problem.

Lesson #2 from the ADMA Forum 2010 – Understand multi-dimensional insights.

• Changing consumer behaviour starts with changing yours. You cannot predict the future but you can use your data, analytics information and website behaviour to help shape your Marketing Strategy.

• “One method is not ‘the only’ method any more. Take advantage of all of the direct marketing and social media tools that are available to speak to your customers today. We did and we elected the U.S. president” Meaghan Burdik – Direct Marketing Director, Obama for America.

• The advice on the floor was: Build intuitive, dynamic, multi-channel campaigns to engage customers on a personal level. Engaging with customers in a two-way dialogue, connecting online and offline channels within an analytics framework and fully recognising the value of each individual customer is the way of the future.

·         “Social Media means data. All actions leave a trail and you can use this data for research and strategy. It should be treated like any other Marketing Communications opportunity: with One Strategy, not 100 tactics”. Jeff Richardson, CEO The Online Circle.

·         “Monitor cross channels and avoid channel conflicts” Daniel Roberts – Head of Online Woolworth.

A strong message from the speakers was the need to marry research, on handoff line, with database analysis to define an holistic understand of your target. At some point during the conference someone told me “Better to have a simple analysis that delivers insight than complex analysis that delivers confusion”.

Lesson #3 from the ADMA Forum 2010: Make sure off-line and on-line communications are aligned. Your brand and key messages should be consistent across the spectrum of channels available. Know your market, learn which mixed channel customers respond best and provide premium results. (thanks to Graham Plant from Pacific Digital).

And then came the subject of ROI and the measurement of impact of online into offline conversions

• Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder), Christian Bartens (Datalicious) and Karen Ganschow (Telstra) nailed the topic, delivering great presentations about the real tangibility of measuring financial ROI and the impact of online into offline activity. Very impressive, real and informative.

Mr Blanchard  “to effectively measure the impact of social media, companies need to blend three things: social media measurement, analytics and a business metric. Where most companies fail is they don’t add that third component.

Through my eyes – it was good to see most companies and agencies measuring social media with criteria such as how often people click on ads, likes and followers those numbers are still the Internet currency. However it was disappointing that they failed to include harder business metrics to truly measure the impact on the bottom line.

Far from being a theoretical discussion, the ADMA Forum 2010 was a forum to discuss the change in consumer behaviour and the dangerous approach of considering your communications in silos being driven by tactics and channels rather than insights and strategy. Well worth being there.

Lucio Ribeiro is Managing Director for The Online Circle and it was ADMA Forum 2010 Social Media Manager, you can find him on Twitter @lucio_ribeiro or http://au.linkedin.com/in/luciodiasribeiro

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