Here’s a copy of my latest article in May’s AdMedia:
It seems a little redundant to say it, but new media really isn’t new when it comes to online advertising. It’s been around for 13 years or more, but there are still a number of brand categories that aren’t investing in the medium in any meaningful way.
I recently spoke at a marketing event put on by the IAB NZ. The theme was… well it was the title for this article actually. During the presentation I covered what I consider to be the most influential online marketing opportunities available to us today: Display, search and social. There are key elements or platforms within each that stand out as immediate shots in the arm for many NZ brands.
For display it’s really about reaching large, engaged audiences online in a number of measurable ways under all sorts of content guises. The Internet has around 26%* of all media consumption in this country and 48%** of them are majority household shoppers.
We heard the most astounding thing in our office the other day. One of our sales guys was talking with a retail marketer who literally said: “We’ll get around to advertising on it, when everyone’s online.” This should be music to any retailer in the meat/grocery category, because while these guys wait for the other 12% of Kiwis to come online (88%** of them are already there) they’re leaving the door wide open.
Like other forms of brand advertising – display is your opportunity to influence people’s purchasing intent, putting your product or service top of mind above your competitors in an environment in which they can actively act or research (via search or directly from your site or an e-tail store) or engage (via branded content – think advertorial – or social media). It seems like many local brand marketers are still nervous about online advertising, but when you think about it, it’s far less risky than many other forms of advertising – at least someone physically has to visit a site in order for it to generate an advertising impression.
Some recent research from Comscore in Europe shows a 72% increase in visitation to an advertiser’s site as a result of display advertising and a 94% increase in branded (key brand terms or a brand name) search activity. Opinion Research found in its sponsored April 2010 report that 53% of respondents were more likely to act on a product or service endorsement (ie, advertorial) from a trusted online publication. So it seems, if you’re not investing in online display advertising you’re leaving the shopping trolley out in the hope someone will find it and fill it.
The great thing about search is you only pay for results. You can drive qualified leads to your site or store at a fraction of the cost of other media and many brands just don’t show up in common search terms.
An important thing to remember about search is that people’s usage habits evolve. People click on trusted brands and sources built from experience, friends and brand activity. This further highlights the need to have a comprehensive brand strategy that marries with your audiences’ time in media.
According to Google there are around 200 million monthly searches through its engine in NZ. Of all global online users, 85% use search (who knows what the others do) and locally there were 23 million searches for travel in the month of June 2009 alone. The reality is it doesn’t get more targeted than search, but it’s important to do the brand work and build trust via social media.
Social media is probably the most potent customer service tool in the last decade. Forget about customer retention systems and rewards programmes, which all had massive influence on the way we managed our customer bases. Social has the power to gain consumer insights from the horse’s mouth, build raving fans and convert your brand’s detractors.
It’s a huge opportunity to build frequency with your brand and to drive influence through your fans, followers and their friends. Facebook and Twitter are the two preeminent opportunities in the NZ market when it comes to social media. The former has around 1.6-million NZ users according to Facebook and the latter has follower bases of more than 17,500 for a brand like Air NZ’s grabaseat or 1,042,420 for Richard MacManus’s ReadWriteWeb. These numbers are no mean feat considering the average Twitter user follows less than 5 people.
The standout companies that are really nailing the entire approach (in my opinion) are brands like Air NZ. The airline engages with its audience at multiple touchpoints across the web and breaks activity into targeted subsets – grabaseat, AirNZ, AirNZ Aus, AirNZ US. Over the last four months it has run more than 191 million advertising impressions across local websites and has 25,000 fans (likes) on Facebook. Rob Fife’s highly publicised (online) response to the Listener was received with an overwhelmingly positive response by Twitter and Facebook followers/ fans, and the company continually releases useful tools for mobile – like its handy iPhone check-in system and Spot-On travel guide apps.
Lion Nathan delivered more than 7 million page impressions over the last month across local sites and has run a number of integrated campaigns such as its race to where you’d rather be competition, free Becks beer (redeemable via SMS short-codes) or Edge around the web campaigns. The Becks free beer campaign run on getfrank.co.nz achieved a 28% response rate. A no-brainer for free beer, but the point is other beer brands simply aren’t doing it here in NZ.
And last but not least Greenpeace’s social campaign to pressure Nestle into revising their palm oil policies resulted in 1.5-million views for their hard-hitting “time for a break” video and 200,000 emails to Nestle calling for the discontinuation of their current Palm Oil policies. If that’s not a great case study for social media’s ability to engage and the web’s ability to influence perception and action – what is?
