We’re now pleased to announce that to keep up with our expanding team, we’re moving to a bigger and brighter home!

Our new address from the 14th November 2011 will be:
Level 2
83 Palmerston Crescent
South Melbourne VIC 3205

Our new phone number will be changing to +61 3 9696 7473, but all our email addresses will stay the same.

Moving day is set for Friday 11th November 2011, so access to phones, emails, Twitter and Facebook might be interrupted in the afternoon.  In case of emergency, call us on the mobile 0423 694 338.

If you have any questions about the move in the meantime, please get in contact with us.

To find us, please see our details on the Google map below.

We look forward to seeing you in our brand spanking new office!

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Congratulations Cadbury and The Online Circle team

This week at the agency we are celebrating a big milestone. The Cadbury Dairy Milk Australia Facebook fan page we manage has reached 100,000 fans making it the 7th largest Australian food/beverage Facebook fan page.

Cadbury are celebrating this milestone by giving away 10 ‘thank you’ packs, click here to enter.

The Online Circle has been managing this page since its inception in early 2010. Well done to all the team who have worked hard on this account. Click on the link for other articles relating to Cadbury celebrates Facebook success

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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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Google Analytics, Google Webmaster tools, CPC, Blogs, WordPress, etc…

Agencies sharing accounts is a hassle

One of the big hassles is when Media buying agencies and Execution agencies need to work together on Advertising channels (Facebook ads, Google ads, Yahoo ads).

Media buyers have the tools, knowledge and power of negotiation but the Social Media agency has the interpretation and the street smarts from the community and how to maximise the potential communication within the channel.

With the Search Engines there’s no problem, you just share what you need to share with “who” you need to share, but it wasn’t possible with Facebook.

Well, now you can.

The Permissions tool now lets a user give others the ability to create a new ad on your behalf. It makes it easy to designate additional users who can perform key tasks, such as improving the quality and performance of an ad as well as monitoring results of the ad campaign.

To give another user access, simply:

• Go to your Settings page of your Ads Manager
• Click the “Add User” button
• Enter the name or email address of the person you want to add
• Choose the access level. “General User” will allow full control, whereas “Reports Only” will allow for monitoring results but not editing campaigns.

There are 3 access levels:

Administrator: Administrators can invite other users to access their ads account, create, edit and delete ads, add and remove credit cards, and export ad reports. There is only one administrator to an account and they must be the original owner. Only administrators can provide other people with access to an advertising account.

General user: General users can create, edit and delete ads and campaigns, see but not change billing, and access all reports.

Reports only user: Reports only users can access all reports.

Done, now I just need to convince the client.

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He did, in February, this excellent short on Chatroulette that became the official explanation of what is the site.

Casey has now published his new video in the same style as the previous video sums up the controversy about Facebook’s privacy.

The very title says: a movie for anyone who is the “blue social network” – Facebook.

A Movie for Anyone On FaceBook from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

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However one of most important steps is most of the time forgotten – Landing pages.

This “little” detail may be the main reason you are losing money on your campaigns.

One of the most underutilised tactics in Internet Marketing is landing pages.

Landing pages have been discussed since Internet marketing started with emails and display ads. Unfortunately, it’s one of those things that people talk about and write about more than they actually do.

For the sake of this article, a landing page is defined as the web page that a prospect “lands” on after clicking on a link – any link – from an email, a CPC campaign, search engine result, inbound link from another website, newsletter; you get the idea.

In essence, every landing page you develop (in fact, every website page) should have a specific goal (inspired by Seth Godin):

-          Get a visitor to click (to go to another page, on your site or someone else’s).

-          Get a visitor to buy.

-          Get a visitor to give permission for you to follow up (by email, phone, etc.). This includes registration of course.

-          Get a visitor to tell a friend.

-          Improve your Market Position in the visitor’s mind.

-          (and the more subtle) Get a visitor to learn something, which could even include posting a comment or giving you some sort of feedback

As Gavin Heaton once wrote – “Every page is sacred, EVERY page. You always need to consider the upstream and the downstream”

A great competitive advantage.

I cannot understand why marketers don’t spend enough time and energy in building the last, and probably most important, step in the Internet marketing process.

Most websites create their landing pages as their campaigns launch, and they leave them alone until they collapse under their own weight.

As more companies find out about the advantages of Internet marketing, and fighting for places on SERP’s or a better position on PPC campaigns increase in competitiveness, testing and improving your landing pages help you to optimise your ROI converting more visitors for less cost.

Loveday and Niehaus, the authors of Web Design for ROI, discuss some unique issues for landing pages, which I’ve summarised below:

* They have to essentially perform the entire sales process.

The landing page (remember what Gavin says) must offer a product, service, or information, capture your visitor’s attention long enough to pique his or her interest and ultimately want to convert, and entice the user to take action (fill out a form, provide payment, etc). Basically, your landing page has to act as your best salesperson. That’s a lot to ask of one little page.

* They have to capture attention very quickly.

People skim, scan, and scoot. Your landing page has only a few precious seconds to keep your visitor from hitting the back button.

* They’re viewed by a lot of new eyeballs.

A lot of new visitors see your landing page compared to your built-in audience. These new people probably aren’t going to know what your site’s about or whether it’s representing a reputable company.

Below you can find a list for guidelines:

1.Establish credibility.
2.Make sure your design looks professional to your audience and is industry-appropriate.
3.Include positive resources and testimonials when necessary or useful
4.Make sure nothing’s broken eg. links to a YouTube video.
5.Simplify and separate.
6.Reduce or eliminate navigation.
7.Minimise your branding.
8.Think of your landing page as a continuation of your ad.
9.Don’t make promises you can’t (or won’t) keep.
10.Re-iterate your ad’s call to action.
11.Use consistent graphics and images.
12.Keep the language consistent.
13.Segment for different audiences/customers.
14.Personalise for your visitor.
15.User fewer but better graphics.
16.Make sure the medium is what’s best for your offer.
17.Speak the customer’s language, not yours.
18.Emphasis benefits, not features.
19.Weed out all but the most essential points.
20.Cover all your bases.
21.Be intelligent about how you display your information.
22.Provide a clear call to action.
23.Consider providing a secondary call to action (don’t overdue it – it can cause a paradox of choice)
24.Provide offline alternatives.
25.Don’t request more than the minimum information necessary.
26.Make your buttons look like buttons.

There are different tools available (Google optimizer is a great free one) that help you to test.

Before releasing Internet Marketing Academy, my team ran more than seven variations of landing pages. There were variations with and without clients testimonials, videos and other combinations. We learnt a lot!

One of the combinations gave us around 200% more conversions, just by changing few key elements.

Only testing will tell what is better for your website. The more you test, the more profitable (useful) your website will become.

Once you have evolved a combination producing profitable results, you then have your new “control” level and you can start testing new ways to beat it.

It will cost you more time, but it will also increase your ROI.

In this case more is more.

(Obs I originaly publish this article on Digital Ministry website)

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Each section also features a marketer profile with brands such as Deloitte, Dell, Commonwealth Bank, Jaguar, and Subway.

On the Search and Online Marketing section it couldn’t be better, real guns Julian Persuad, Phil Duffield and more.

I couldn’t be happier to be part of the “around the Table” on Search and Online Marketing section. Good work and thanks to Sean and Kate.

Read the edition and be prepared to 2011.

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