Articles about Campaigns

Hi all,
My post today covers a less discussed but critical aspect of  how pay per click account history can affect the Google Adwords quality score. The ppc account history of your campaigns is the recording of the clicks, costs, CTRs and all other performance factors relating to your ads from the date of inception of your Adwords account to date.

Good targeted and relevant keywords are vital to the healthy performance of any pay per click campaign. Not all keywords are created equal. In a campaign, some keywords outperform the others. It is a publicly discussed fact that poorly performing keywords can bring down the quality score of an otherwise decently performing campaign. The crux of the issue is: Is it wise to delete the poor performers or move those keywords to new ad groups under new ads?

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Hi all,
Landing page is one of the most important aspects of Pay per click (PPC) marketing on the Google Adwords network. After the initial keyword research and the creation of ad copy, you must have ads that are well targeted, great call to action and relevant to your industry and geotargeted to your target audience.

Each ad group in each of your campaigns must have a corresponding landing page that talks only about the product or service advertised in that specific ad. For exampe, if you are selling blue widgets, your landing page copy must address only blue widgets. This increases the relevancy of the whole process as the user gets to click on the ad of her choice and finds relevant content on the landing page that is in sync with the ad itself.

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[an abbreviated version of this article first appeared in the Febuary issue of Admedia magazine]

Let me state at the outset that I am a card-carrying member of the direct response school of search marketing, an unapologetic advocate for spending more on search and less on everything else. I got this way because I was responsible for making a return on online marketing budgets and over time I found that search consistently delivered the results. Simple. (more…)

This post over at Idealog caught my attention this morning…

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt told a recent Advertising Age conference that the future of advertising lies in measurement. But, to quote the genius campaign for Toyota’s Signature range of imported used cars: they would say that.

It would be easy to assume that Google is utterly unbiased—the numbers don’t lie, after all. But data (gathered after the event) doesn’t necessarily amount to intelligence.

If Google is right we will have gone from one extreme to the other. Rampant idealism meets bloodless statistics.

read the full article

The point I think David MacGregor is making is that marketing and advertising are not just about statistics, and that we should not let Google’s algorithmic approach to what they do vanillify marketing practice. And I have to say that I agree in large part…marketing is about people and when it comes to people there’s always more art than science imho.

But marketing and advertising is an art in the conception and the execution (just like business generally). Google are pioneering ways to execute better but I don’t think that necessarily means there isn’t still plenty of scope for well conceived advertising creative.

Even in Google’s Adwords product there’s a need for creativity and persuasion. For sure it is very a limited medium, but good ‘creative’ copy in search marketing can move ROI + or - an enormous amount. And Google’s Adwords product isn’t just about what you do to get the click, that’s only half the job (or less), what happens after the click is probably more important…enter stage left talented marketers.

So, I would argue that Google’s algorithmic approach doesn’t reduce the need or importance of good creative marketing and advertising (the big idea!), but does bring some long overdue science to the execution. Measurement is really important. Particularly as the economy tightens good marketers want to know where the ROI is.

But then again, I’m a dyed in the wool search marketer so I would say that :)

June 17th was the day Mozilla released it’s latest version of the Firefox browser, Firefox 3.0. This was not only Firefox 3 launch day though. With the release of Firefox 3 this also kicked into action Download Day. Download Day was a campaign Mozilla was pushing to set a new Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in a 24 hour period, coinciding with the launch of Firefox 3.

According to the Download Day headquarters, they got more than 8 million Firefox 3 downloads in 24 hours. That’s more Firefox downloads than they’ve ever had in a single day and it created a new Guinness World Record.

The Download Day microsite exists within Mozilla’s official community marketing site, Spread Firefox. At Download Day headquarters you were able to make a pledge that you were going to download Firefox 3 prior to launch day, with the pledge results being displayed via an interactive world map. This map was a good touch as not only could you see the total amount of pledges worldwide, but going off some of the comments in the various Mozilla groups and forums, it probably helped engage a bit of competitiveness between some countries, thus encouraging more pledges.

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It has been six months since Mintshot literally erupted onto the scene. At the time of the site launch, I thought I would hold off writing about Mintshot, sit back and see how it all went. I’m glad I did, because unfortunately since the launch Mintshot has been plagued by a plethora of issues including loads of site usability and security issues, not to mention their guerilla marketing launch activity. I won’t even attempt to list any of the site or security issues because from the bit of research I’ve done there appear to be so many. For excellent in depth coverage on all of the issues, check out the NZ Reality TV blog. The blogs posts and comments about Mintshot makes for very, very interesting reading. You really do get a good picture of whats been going on. A heck of a lot has been happening and many users of the site have been less than happy. So much so that a spoof video has popped up mocking the fact that the site was outsourced.

The Mintshot concept, as is stated in the sites ‘About us’ section: “A fully integrated community marketing site where consumers could earn virtual dollars which they could in turn grow and use to purchase a range of products from New Zealand’s best brands without it ever costing them a cent”. How you earn the virtual dollar is by watching branded advertising online. Once you have earned the virtual dollars, you then need to grow the dollars and in turn spend the virtual dollars before the end of each month. At the end of each month your Mintshot dollar balance goes back to zero.

Minshot was founded by Nick Dalton, Ben Hickey and the ever high profile Marc Ellis. In a press release Marc Ellis said “The site has been designed to be engaging and top fun for the consumer, and an important marketing tool for advertisers”. “A key objective is to have over 100,000 people register with mintshot.co.nz within the first 48 hours. We think we will get there with our launch activity which is sure to put the words mintshot.co.nz on everyone’s lips!”.

And, it is that Minshot launch activity that I want to talk about. On the 13th November 07, a guerilla marketing tactic was used to help launch the Mintshot site. This consisted of Marc Ellis and team setting up a fake volcanic eruption on Rangitoto Island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf. They did this by igniting a fair amount of smoke flares. This kind of stunt is just what you’d expect from the likeable joker Marc Ellis isn’t it, he’s always up to some kind of laddish behaviour. The stunt was well planned with legal advice being taken around the stunt. Initially this hoax eruption seemed to be pulled off without a hitch, well that’s what you think after seeing the footage of them celebrating after the stunt had taken place.

Then people started to complain including The Department of Conservation (DOC). According to the NZ Herald, the stunt was undertaken without a permit from the Department of Conservation. In the end Marc Ellis had to apologise for the Mintshot stunt.

So, the question is did the stunt backfire on them? Well, I think no in one sense, but yes in another. No, because they pulled off the hoax pretty easily which got them the initial publicity for their launch. Then the publicity continued with the aftermath/backlash caused from the launch activity giving them more free publicity. On the other hand, yes I think the stunt did backfire on them also. Back fired in the sense that they ended up having to apologise for their actions. So, it did make them look a bit silly really. Maybe Marc Ellis went one step too far this time.

Looking up the meaning of guerilla marketing on Wikipedia it mentions that according to Levinson (the guy who coined Guerilla marketing in his 1984 book), the Guerrilla Marketer must “deliver the goods”. In The Guerrilla Marketing Handbook, he states: “In order to sell a product or a service, a company must establish a relationship with the customer. It must build trust and support. It must understand the customer’s needs, and it must provide a product that delivers the promised benefits.” So, it seems so far, even though they launched with a bang, the Mintshot site does not to appear to have “delivered the goods” to the punters.

Over the last few months you more than likely would have heard some of the hype surrounding the Monopoly World Vote. It was hard not to. It spread prolifically through email and word of mouth, was blogged about repeatedly, had huge forum and discussion group involvement and made the news all over the world. It has proven to be a hugely successful and well engineered viral marketing campaign that has spread globally and received an incredible amount of attention and coverage - and it’s not over yet.

Hasbro, the makers of the Monopoly board game, did some incredibly smart marketing with the development of their first ever global edition of the popular game, called ‘Here & Now - The World Edition’. It was a simple idea - replace the iconic properties of the original game with some of the major cities of the world. To do so, they devised an international campaign to involve the global public by allowing them to vote for the 20 cities (out 68 worldwide) to be included in the new edition game.

Within a matter of days, the campaign went viral. Fans the world over urged friends and strangers to vote for their home city or town. Multiple Facebook groups were created and news stories in many countries encouraged their citizens to register and cast their vote.

Here in New Zealand, Queenstown was the only city to make the short list and it too resulted in local news coverage to encourage Kiwis to get on board. The polls closed on February 29th but the buzz continued when a second round vote was carried out for two ‘wildcard’ places. Voters could nominate places, meaning a lot of the smaller, lesser known cities had a chance to make the cut, including Auckland, which made the top 20. Voting for these closed late March.

The microsite where the voting took place (which now redirects to the Hasbro’s site) required an email registration to participate, and allowed for just one vote for one city per person per day. The collection of email addresses was a smart move, as not only did it limit ballot box stuffing, but emails will likely be used to notify voters with campaign updates and of course the release of the new game itself.

So just how successful was the campaign?

• As at the time of this post, Google reports 27,900 pages when searching for ‘monopoly world vote’ and 34,200 for ‘www.monopolyworldvote.com‘. Yahoo! returned 11,700,000 pages and MSN 2,600,000 pages for ‘monopoly world vote’.
• According to Technorati, there were 991 blog reactions to www.monopolyworldvote.com in a range of languages from all over the world.
• A whopping 258 Facebook Groups were created to encourage voting among friends and networks in several countries.
• And according to Quantcat the site received 53,424 unique visits each month from the US alone. Alexa reported a peak of close to 19 million page views daily.

And then there was the news. The Monopoly World Vote made headlines the world over, such as here, here, here and here.

So why was this campaign so successful?

• Hasbro have hit the nail on the head with this concept. Monopoly is a a good old family favourite. It’s a universally enjoyed game which embodies nostalgic memories of childhood and youth. It is already one of the world’s best selling board games, so the campaign was an innovative way to revamp and generate interest in an old product.
• The microsite was well-designed, colourful and user-friendly . It engaged the user and included an interactive map showcasing which countries were in the lead.
• The end result is essentially a user-generated product which involved people across the globe, from die-hard monopoly fans, city proud people, to patriotic citizens of smaller, lesser known countries.
• The idea has fantastic viral appeal and is a perfect ’social media’ fit - the numerous blogs and Facebook groups are a testament to this.
• And then there is the multi-phase approach. First there was the vote for the major cities, then the vote on the two wildcard places, and in August the final results will be revealed. Finally there is the release of the game itself which is sure to generate further buzz and word of mouth when it hits the shops - fingers crossed Queenstown makes the cut!

I was passing through our living room on my way to enjoy some afternoon summer sun outside on the deck, when I happened to glance at the telly on my way out. The sound on the TV was muted, but I did catch a quick glimpse of an advert for a web site called vouchermate.co.nz. on C4 and thought I’d better check them out.

Vouchermate is a web site where companies display downloadable vouchers for discounts on their goods and services. You can either print them off for free, or send a textcode and have a voucher sent to your phone at a cost of 50c per voucher.

So, it’s a pretty simple idea. You can’t go wrong if you want to get some discounts. My initial thoughts on this web site concept is…. are people really going to bother to go to the effort of doing this just to save a few pingers? For me personally, I probably would go to the effort if I thought I was getting a pretty good discount. So, for the sake of my curiousity and research, my search begins.

Within in my local area, I find six vouchers available. Four vouchers for Beaurepaires, two for the National Combat Simulation Centre and one 10% discount for Gr8 SHUZ Footwear. I ‘m not really interested in any of their promoted discounts. I search other areas around where I live as well, but still don’t find that much that I would be interested in. The only two vouchers that I may be currently interested in is a 10% discount on flowers from All Season Flowers and the ‘Bring a friend free of charge when you buy a Friends of the Zoo membership’. So, doing the math…. if I bought a $25 bunch of flowers (and lets be honest you can’t really get much in the way of flowers for under $25) with a 10% voucher discount, that would be a $2.50 discount on the flowers. Well, I really don’t think I would go to the effort to use that voucher, purely because I don’t think the $2.50 (minus the 50 cents if you use the text option) is that it’s that much of an amazing discount. Honestly would you really bother. I think I would go to the effort if I found a voucher for something I wanted that had a discount of 20% or more. These kind of 20% or more discounts are available from some companies on vouchermate.

Even so, I don’t know if I’m convinced that I would go out of my way to use Vouchermate. Maybe I would, if I happen to remember to check the site before I got out shopping next time, but then again maybe I won’t remember. My thoughts at the moment is that Vouchermate is a bit, well, boring. It needs more than just come check out the vouchers available. Looking at their blog, the March 12 post talks about their biggest ever surge in site traffic since their TV advertisements started on TV3 and C4. Getting people to the site is one thing, but getting people to do a repeat visit is even harder. How about some bigger incentives to revisit the site, like maybe some competitions where you can win some fancy prizes or something?

Have you ever received emails about April Fools’ Day jokes or pranks? Have you ever sent out prank emails or website links to your friends? If yes, then that’s the sign of April Fools’ Day viral marketing. As a marketer, we tend to use any marketing channel and occasion to engage our customers or prospects. Then why not April Fools’ Day?

If you deploy the strategy correctly, an April Fools’ Day campaign can inject humour elements into your brand, provide a welcome break, and may reach the audience that you’d never think about. An April Fools’ Day campaign through online channels could help you to achieve results at almost no cost. You can use any online marketing channel to construct your campaign such as websites, emails, widgets & gadgets, blogs and social media sites. Of course, you need to be very careful about it and you don’t want to harm your brand. Don’t even try it if it doesn’t fit your brand image at all. For example, if you’re a legal firm or government agency, you may not want to try.

Google is pretty good at April Fools’ Day pranks. Last year, it announced two faux products on April Fools’ Day - Gmail Paper (Google will print thousands of your emails as hard copy and deliver to you for free. Of course, there will be ads on the back) and Google TiSP (a plumbing-based in-home wireless broadband service). You can come out with any ideas for your own campaign. The only thing that limits you is your imagination. PC World has summarized the top April Fools’ Day Jokes of the past few years. It may be a good starting point for generating your own ideas. Let’s take a look at the top 5 (source: PCWorld.com).

Top 5 April Fools’ Day Joke Web Sites

1. Camouflage Deer? - On 1st April 2007, the PETA Files blog announced a new plan to protect local deer from hunters by painting them with a camouflage pattern.
2. Opera SoundWave - On 1st April 2005, Opera announced platform-independent real-time speech technology for short and medium range interpersonal communication. It may be a way to outdo Firefox and IE :-)
3. The Risks Digest - On 1st April 2006, it reported about a motorist trapped in a traffic circle for 14 hours because of his car’s malfunctioning lane-keeping software.
4. The Screened Sphorb - ThinkGeek announced a product called The Screened Sphorb that uses resolution transistors to create an array of functional sub-screens for just $39.99.
5. Animated Tattoos - Want to try? On 1st April 2006, howstuffworks.com told you how animated tattoos work.

Again, why do an April Fools’ Day campaign? Apart from possible branding benefits I mentioned earlier, it may help you generate inbound links to your website to boost PageRank and website traffic. Furthermore, people do pass it around and talk about it (like what I just did) for years, if you do it right!

Happy April Fools’ Day!

The Speight’s Great Beer Delivery was conceived after Tim Ellingham, a kiwi fella living in London wrote an email to the Speight’s Beer company saying he was missing the cold Speight’s beer. Sending this guy a few dozen Speight’s beer wasn’t going to be enough. So the people at Speight’s came up with the most brilliant idea that’s come out of Godzone in a while, and that was to put a pub on a boat with volunteer crew members and sail them around the world to deliver some cold Speight’s beer in London. If you wanted to be part of this adventure and were interested in becoming a crew member, all you had to do was register your application on the Speight’s web site and convince them of your southern ways and values.

At the time The Speight’s Great Beer Delivery was announced, I thought WOW, that’s totally awesome! Now that’s one hell of a brilliant marketing idea that’s for sure. Good on ya Speight’s, I truly applaud you. You guys are geniuses. I would of totally been up for applying to be a crew member for this voyage of a lifetime, but unfortunately the timing was all wrong after recently becoming a mum. The reality is though, that I wouldn’t of been a good candidate since I don’t represent their southern ways.

The crew were chosen and all of the people chosen for the trip were guys. Now, I know that women applied, so come on Speight’s there is no excuse, you could of at least chosen a couple of girls for the crew? Anyway, on July 25^th 2007, the replica Speight’s Alehouse pub left Dunedin on its journey to London. The trip would take them to Samoa, the Panama Canal, the Bahamas, New York and London. Through the Great Beer Delivery web site you could watch the crews latest video diaries, read their blogs, send messages of support and even ask them questions. What I found a bit annoying about these video diaries on the web site is that you could only view the video at the one size and you were not given the option of being able to view the video in a larger format. You could also watch a weekly TV episode called ‘Crowd Goes Wild’ to keep up to date on where the boat was and what the crew had been up to.

There is a Speight’s Great Beer Delivery profile on MySpace which had 7462 views when I last looked. Unfortunately it looks like the MySpace presence for The Great Beer Delivery was a bit half hearted though. The reason I say this is because the blog entries here have not been kept up-to-date and there are only two videos appearing when you click on the profile video link. Also when you do a search for the Speight’s Great Beer Delivery within the MySpace videos category you get only one video available. I am not sure if this MySpace presence is an official Speight’s one or not. To be honest, it really just looks like some random person has taken it upon themselves to add the Speight’s profile and then they didn’t continue to update it. With only two Speight’s Great Beer Delivery videos having been posted on YouTube as well, maybe Speight’s could of used MySpace and YouTube as more of an online marketing tool.

I think that Speight’s could of really taken more advantage of their amazing idea of The Great Beer Delivery. They could of taken advantage of the fact that (1) it’s such a brilliant idea, (2) when it’s such a brilliant idea, people will talk about it. People will create a buzz in the social networking and social media sites. They could of harnessed this potential in their online marketing campaign. For example, all those video diary entries on the web site could of been posted on the the likes of YouTube and MySpace as well. This might of helped push the Speight’s brand even further and get more exposure for The Great Beer Delivery campaign.

Upon arrival in London and once they got the Alehouse on to dry land, there were seven nights of celebrations in the pub itself with free beer to be had, yes that’s right FREE BEER. All that the ex-pat New Zealanders living in London needed to do was register their details via the web site to become a UK Speight’s Mate. There were 700 tickets available for the lucky punters. The permanent location of the Speight’s Alehouse in London is above the Temple Tube station. You can check it out via Google maps.