5 Creative Marketing, PR and Social Media Ideas

by Frank Strong

If reading too much can suppress creative thinking, then so too can habit.  Sure, Aristotle saidexcellence is not an act, but a habit, but how easy is it for marketers to fall into a pattern? The same old pattern.

Patterns are predictable and measurable; but they are also avoidable. It is consumer reflex to avoid a pitch. Consider email, for example, which is easy enough to mark as spam.  What would happen if email suddenly was not a tool in the marketer’s toolkit?

I’d suggest that a freak-out session would be followed by a creative session – and perhaps even better and more creative marketing ideas. To that end, here are five creative marketing, PR and social media ideas:

1. Cat videos provide an excellent return on investment

It’s earned 2.1 million views since Toronto-based John Street Advertising uploaded itsCatvertising video to YouTube on November 10, 2011. I had never seen it until it started to make the social media rounds a few weeks back.  It is hilarious!

The video plays on several trends – the shift to digital marketing, the fact there are a lot of cat videos on YouTube and spoofs the Social Media Revolution video Erik Qualman produced several years ago. The video and the results also highlight several other trends in marketing and PR:

• Paid into earned. This is in fact an advertisement for which no payment was made for placement. It’s earning media.
• Capacity to capitalize. It ought to scare PR firms how in some ways, advertising firms are better equipped to capitalize on digital formats; how many PR pros do you know that can product videos?
• Be the media. Advertising as a culture realized and capitalized on the direct-to-consumer trend of digital mediums long ago; perhaps even still have a lead on PR.

2. The fake summer associate

Scotty Larson: Portrait from Scotty Larson on Vimeo.  

Every summer law students apply for “summer associate” positions at law firms.  It’s a path to employment upon graduation and a rather revered rite of passage within law circles.

At Edelson, a 20-attorney shop in Chicago, the partners hired an actor to be an absolutely outrageous summer associate. He’d do things like hire an “out-of-work” attorney to do his work at $20 per hour, and when the actor presumed to be a summer associate turned in that work, the partners would praise the quality.

This didn’t’t last just an hour, or even a day, but went on for a week before the firm revealed the prank in a video to the bona fide summer associates. Businesses compete for talent and this is a great example of building a reputation among candidates as a great place to work.  As reported in the legal trade publication, the ABA Journal:

The idea was to have some fun, but not make summer associates feel that they were a target, and bring the group together by giving them something to talk about after hours, he explained. “We thought it was pretty successful.”

3.  How to honestly create your own index

Honest social experiment by Honest Tea (Photo: Honest Tea’s Twitter stream).

Honest Tea company began a project with unconventional research. According to WTOP, a news radio station in the Washington, DC market:

Earlier this month, the beverage company Honest Tea set up a kind of social experiment to test the honesty of every state in America. In each location the company set up unattended kiosks stocked with chilled bottles of tea. A sign requested $1 per bottle, but it was all on the honor system. Nearby, workers secretly recorded the results.

Alabama and Hawaii topped the charts as most honest states.  DC was deadlast.  The WTOP article offers us another indication as to why.

When Seth Goldman left Dupont Circle following the experiment, he realized his bike had been stolen. “The whole bike was gone, so the lock had to have been cut,” said the Honest Tea CEO. “It was not the best show of honesty for the D.C. area on that day.”

Sorry about the bike… but very creative idea!

4. Smiles to change the world

Coca-Cola is a marketing legend for a reason: it never seems to run out of new ideas.  Adweek wrote:

The typical transaction is that Coke gives you something of obvious value—a free drink or a fun, surprising experience—and that thing makes you happy, sometimes infectiously so. That’s an honest interaction. This new stunt, though—produced and crowdsourced with Victors & Spoils and MOFILM—is different.

Then it cites Coke’s own YouTube description which reads:

We do. Coca-Cola sent our people all over the world, from Jamaica to the United Kingdom to Pakistan and more, to simply smile at strangers — to see who would smile back.

It’s a great video and a good idea.  I think the beverage companies are going to need the goodwill.  It was Adam Singer who seeded the idea with me that the soft drink makers are in a state similar to the tobacco companies in the late 80s or early 90s; the idea is gaining steady steam.

5.  Ads that drive controversy and coverage

I’m a huge fan of using paid media tactics to earn media. The concept is a blend of mediarendered in the form of integrated marketing that drive sales. It’s never been a question about advertising versus PR, but how the two can work together.

The University of Richmond School of Law did just that as the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog reported:

the post-card ad shows a screen shot of an iPhone displaying a snippet of a text message thread between a theoretical law school applicant and a friend.

Add in some controlled controversy – like sophomoric dialogue – and there’s a larger story to be had:

Is the ad really that bad? There’s often a fine line between devil’s and moron’s advocacy, but Law Blog thinks it’s actually kind of brilliant.

Aside from the fact that the Wall Street Journal called an advertisement “brilliant” – which might be celebration enough, the writer explains with a  bit more rigor his thinking:

Yes, the conversation is preposterous, like an alien imitating shorthand text slang. But in a catchy way, it sells the school with compelling data points. Applicants are up. It’s getting more selective. And its graduates are finding jobs. That may be a silly way to make the point, but Richmond drives it home. In that sense, all the attention it’s getting is a good thing.

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CSS Selectors from CSS4 till CSS1

CSS4

Negation pseudo-class selector Matches-any pseudo-class selector Local link pseudo-class selector Time-dimensional pseudo-class selector Indeterminate-value pseudo-class selector Default option pseudo-class selector Validity pseudo-class selectors Optionality pseudo-class selectors Mutability pseudo-class selectors Structural pseudo-class selectors Grid-Structural pseudo-class selectors Attribute case-sensitivity selector Reference combination selector Subject of a selector with Child combinator selector Hyperlink pseudo-class selector

CSS3

Negation pseudo-class selector Target pseudo-class selector Scope pseudo-class selector Enabled and Disabled pseudo-class selectors Selected-option pseudo-class selector Structural pseudo-class selectors Attribute selectors General sibling combinator selector

CSS2

Universal selector User action pseudo-class selectors Dir pseudo-class selector Lang pseudo-class selector Attribute selectors Structural pseudo-class selector Child combination selector Adjacent sibling combination selector

CSS1

Type selector ID selector Class selector Descendant combination selector User action pseudo-class selector Link history pseudo-class selector

Bing Webmaster Tools Adds Connected Pages Dashboard

Duane Forrester, the Senior Product Manager at Bing announced a new feature within Bing Webmaster Tools named the “Connected Pages Dashboard.”

Formerly known as linked pages, connected pages is a way for Bing to allow you to tell them what pages you own under your social network. Once you verify these social profiles, Bing connects the dots.

With the new connected pages dashboard within Bing Webmaster Tools, Bing will show you the number of clicks and impressions each social network sent your site. Here is a picture of the dashboard showing social activity over time in search:

The social networks that may show up here include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Windows Store, Google Play, Apple Store, Pinterest, Windows Phone Store, YouTube, Instagram, and MySpace.

A Mature Digital Marketing Industry Provides SEO Opportunity For Small & Ambitious Businesses

As we approach the end of the year, I thought it would be worth reviewing 2013 — and discussing what opportunities lie ahead — from the perspective of a UK-based SEO with a diverse range of multinational clients.

This past year has unarguably been an exciting year for search marketing. We’ve seen Google take dramatic action to clean up its search result pages with its well-publicized Penguin and Panda updates, both of which are still being tweaked in ongoing updates.

This has resulted in a “clearing away” of lower quality sites using unethical SEO techniques and, therefore, a reward of greater visibility for brands “doing the right thing” online — much to the delight of ethical SEO agencies that play by the rules and focus on building relevancy, quality and long-term value for their clients.

The impact of this clearing-out, which has been particularly evident in the retail space, is profound, with better general discoverability for legitimate retailers over pure-play affiliate sites with domains to burn for short-term gain.

So, for SEOs running brand protection against knock-off retailers, life got a lot easier in 2013.

The UK has always been well positioned for technical, high-quality SEO agency support, with a number of world-class agencies rising above the substandard “SEO” of public imagination (and I do think we have a reputation issue as an industry). But European and US agencies have also really pushed the envelope in 2013, upping their game and delivering more technical, stats-led strategies using agile tools to drill down to the quick win opportunities that drive bottom-line revenue improvements for their clients.

As a result, forward-thinking businesses are particularly well positioned to take advantage of a number of multinational opportunities today that are present thanks to Google’s relentless focus on search quality.

Tools To Deliver Multinational Without Breaking The Bank

Arguably, there’s never been a better time in history to be a small brand looking to take on the big guns.

Google now offers tools (such as the hreflang sitemap) which allow small retail websites to roll out to new territories with minimal technical challenge and none of the negative SEO impact typically caused by duplication issues. (If you’re interested in the detail, I recommend this roundup on duplication.)

Of course, this advantage is by no means restricted to small sites, but small = agile, which typically means a competitive edge in getting changes implemented onsite.

So, you can now test new markets online in a way that has never been possible without significant technical and PPC budget. In fact, I’d argue that given the ease with which multinational e-commerce processing can be added to sites these days, your only question should be, “Can I reliably fulfill delivery?” If you can, there’s no reason not to be visible in a given target country right now.

I talk further about the SEO opportunity in this technique and its power to deliver a level playing ground across all brands — regardless of size — in a recent eConsultancy post.

In effect, all brands can be multinational. Smaller brands are agile enough that they can steal a march on their larger competitors by utilizing Google’s tools for huge multinational opportunity.

Challenges In Retail: Paying For Freedom

Two recent changes present a challenge to retailers using online as a key channel.

The first is Google’s migration of its shopping search service to paid-only back in February (in the UK, earlier for the US); the second is its dramatic removal of inbound search term data in its Web analytics package. Both require paid search (PPC) whereas before, they were vital tools provided to retailers for free.

Let’s take a look at the first of these.

Where Once There Was Free Traffic…

…now there is only paid.

Google Shopping was once one of the most economical search channels available. In fact, before it became Google Shopping, it was known as Google Base and inclusion could dramatically ramp up traffic for included retailers due to slow adoption.

All that was required was provision of a detailed and well-tagged feed with all items stocked for inclusion. In return, shopping results were regularly placed above #1 rankings for the highest competition search terms, driving huge quantities of traffic for the largest retailers.

Today, PPC budget must be allocated against the feed to retain inclusion. While still effective, this makes Google Shopping a more problematic feed to supply, as there is no control currently (though watch this space!), over how that spend is allocated across the feed. The unwary retailer could easily end up paying over the odds for clicks to low-value items that generate little or no profit margin.

Dynamically adjusting the feed’s listed items is a bootstrapped way of implementing control over the daily budget held against the feed, but more sophisticated bid strategies are required to really regain the power of this channel.

Ideally, stocking provisions and dynamic price control should be the only dynamic feed elements, removing items that are out of stock and synchronizing product price offers through to the SERP. Allowing standard PPC control over the feed bid strategy would allow for regional bid control, multi-device targeting options, product-specific CPCs and ad creative control and testing.

This is a challenging area for retailers, as the technical specifications are rapidly changing and no clear statement has been made by Google relating to its intentions with bid options. Watch this space is the watchword here.

Tracking Success

There are clear options when considering the second challenge, however: Google’s removal of search term data from its referral strings.

The first, and most obvious option, is to use something other than Google Analytics — an analytics package that could potentially gather keyword data from a different source. However, there are incumbent issues there: if you’ve previously been relying on Google Analytics, then you’ll be losing comparative historical data.

Think that’s no big deal? Consider how different your retail volumes are in December when compared to January and you’ll hopefully appreciate how important it is to compare like-for-like when performing analysis.

There are some options to consider to replace the data Google is now removing:

• You can replace referrer search terms (and look at your SERP CTR) using Webmaster Tools data. However, this data is not a like-for-like replacement of the original referrer data and needs to be treated as such. For big retailers, it will only be a tiny drop in the ocean of their referrer terms.
• Use third-party tools to gather search term rankings (including those of your competitors). This can be difficult if your tool isn’t up to scratch, or if you’re monitoring a significant chunk of terms.
• Use analytics based on ISP data (though this is a very expensive option and so not practicable for smaller retail brands and also doesn’t solve the referrer string issue).
• Implement thorough (and expensive) PPC campaigns replicating all traffic driving terms to date to gain the equivalent data via paid search.

It is clear that the trend from both of Google’s changes indicates a determination to push search analysis and sophisticated traffic-capturing strategies further into its paid search offering. Businesses which have traditionally stayed clear of paid search would be well advised to revisit their decision and sharpen their paid search skills over the coming months.

Online Champions

The market boasts some fantastically successful online retailers, and the general industry trend shows that retailers are planning to further expand their online marketing efforts in 2014. This is particularly likely in the mobile and tablet space, where the overall level of marketing spend is at a lower density than the traffic opportunity due to the recent  massive traffic and retail growth across both device types.

Combined with that trend, the further shift in the retail market into multi-device purchase paths (search at work on a desktop, go into a store and use a mobile for comparison, share the product pictures on the family tablet, etc) suggests that along with multinational opportunities for traffic growth, responsive Web platforms supported by a multi-device, multi-region paid search campaign will flourish in the new year.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

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New AdWords Editor Version 10.3 Now Available

Google released the latest version of AdWords Editor yesterday to all AdWords users. Here is an overview of what is new in version 10.3.

Sitelinks: The new version supports enhanced sitelinks, allowing you to add two lines of text, and a new Sitelink Import Setting (see below) offers the opportunity to import sitelinks with the same text and different URLs. 

This option is available under Tools > Settings (Windows) or AdWords Editor > Preferences (Mac).

Targeting: The new set of “Affinity Categories (reach)” which are defined to reflect the categorization of TV audiences, are now available from the Interest Categories tab when assigning audiences to ad groups. New Gender and Age tabs are also included among the options under Targeting.

Image Ads: Editor also now supports 970×250 image ads.

What’s missing? New newest version of AdWords Editor still leaves out support for many features, among them video ad campaigns and all extensions with the exception of Location, Sitelinks and Dynamic Search Ad Extensions.

Conversion Metrics Now Available In Google AdWords Bid Simulator

The AdWords Bid Simulator tool now offers conversion estimates in addition to impressions and clicks to show how bid changes may affect conversion volume and values.

For each bid option shown in the simulator, the bid simulator provides the number of conversions — both 1-per click and many-per-click — and conversion values if assigned or set. Conversion estimates show how many clicks might result in a conversion within one day, and the estimates are based on “a recent 7 day period”. (Notice Google here does not say the most recent 7 days.) Because the bid simulator is based on a seven day window, conversions that occur outside that period but still within the 30 day conversion window aren’t reflected in the estimates.

Google says the more conversion history and conversion volume in your account, the more accurate the estimates will be, which makes sense. I’m waiting to hear more about whether there are minimum conversion requirements and will update here when I learn more. You’ll want to have conversion tracking set up and stable for at least two weeks before using the bid simulator conversion estimates for volume or values.

The bid simulator is available at the ad group and keyword levels.