This infographic from KISSmetrics shows and provides case studies on how online marketing can drive offline sales. It’s a great starting point when working with all types of business, large and small to determine where to start your digital and social media planning to meet business goals.
Click on the graphic below for an enlarged view:
About The Author: Sean Work is the marketing coordinator at KISSmetrics. Follow him on twitter (@seanvwork) and ask him for a free cup of coffee :)
We’re halfway through the National Football League (NFL) season and this is the time of year that I love. Temperature is cooling down, leaves are changing, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas are the holidays and the NFL season is in full swing. There’s a reason why NFL football is the number one sport in the United States, well-done marketing! Everything you need to know about marketing can be learned from watching and studying the NFL.
The NFL devised the draft in 1935 to acquire the top college players and have held a draft every year since 1936. Since then it has become a prime time television event and the model for other leagues to acquire talent. Even though there are several rounds, the first round and top dozen picks get more media attention and millions of dollars for the picks than some companies in a single year.
Official NFL jerseys sell from $80-150 depending on the team and player. Watch or attend any game and you see a large portion of the fans wearing them. Go to any sports bar on a Sunday and you’ll see even more. In addition to jerseys, team logos appear on just about every product and each one pays a licensing fee to the NFL for the right to use or risk serious lawsuit from a team of high price lawyers and copyright infringement from the feds.
Ads are everywhere but the uniform and the field. The NFL knows that if they slap logos on the teams and the field of play it cheapens the game and could create backlash among fans. Yet we see ads everywhere else and placed without all the tackiness of NASCAR and European Soccer that slap ads anywhere on the vehicle and athlete possible.
The Superbowl, do I really need to explain this? It’s the most watch sporting event on the planet, every year. Commercials cost a million dollars and can give you exposure for to launch a company.
Humans love routines and a consistent time and date makes it easy to build a regular routine around a sporting event. The majority of the NFL games are played on Sunday and usually at 1 pm local time. Even with Monday Night Football and the second-half Thursday night games, most fans get their fix starting at 1 pm on Sunday. For the uber-fan you have primetime games on Sunday and Monday and the occasional Thursday night game.
Instant replay was once a TV feature has now become part of the rules. This year we see automatic review of scoring plays to eliminate error. While I’m not a fan of instant replay as it slows the game down and takes out the human element, it is an analytical process that helps ensure accuracy.
When Hank Williams shouted Obama is a Nazi on Fox News ESPN cut the cord before the NFL had to step in. ESPN knew that the NFL does not need Hank Williams to sell MNF and realized his time had come. Smart move and thank you!
Early on the NFL realized that players tweeting during games would be a distraction and issued a social media policy banning tweets and social media messages starting 90 minutes before the game and lasting until after the game finishes. Instad of waiting for an incident the NFL realized that a clear, concise policy was the best way to keep the attention on the field for players and staff.
Only a half dozen players, coaches and contributors to the game get elected into the NFL Hall of Fame every year making it an honor and priveledge that most players aspire to. Instead of flooding the Hall with great players, it’s reservered for the best of the best. Wonder what it means to the inductees? Watch any induction ceremony and you’ll see a full range of emotions.
More water cooler chatter on Monday mornings is about football and specifically NFL football than any other topic on a regular basis. How many times have you heard, “did you watch the game?” on Monday morning?
With mobile usage and traffic growing by huge numbers recently there is a rush to create mobile friendly versions of your website. But it does not end there, what about a iPhone or iPad app? What about other smartphones: Droid, Blackberry, etc? Just thinking about it can make your head spin!
I’ve had many discussions with my peers and others about what the best choice is and always come back to the same answer. It’s contingent on your customers both current and present. Here are the questions I find myself asking those seeking advice on mobile marketing.
The passing of Steve Jobs was a sad event for me. I bought my first Apple Macintosh computer in 1987. It was a used first generation Mac that cost me $2,300! Nonetheless I loved it, it was my first computer because the Commodore 64 I had in high school never did anything but play games. I wrote my college finals on it, got my first job because I knew how to use a Mac and then proceeded to buy several Macs, Mac IIs, iMacs, G4s, iPods, iPhones and now MacBook Pro.
I always admired Steve Jobs as the real true visionary of our generation that knew what the PC had to be in order for it to change the way we worked, lived, communicated. When Apple ousted him I was pissed. I even bought a few of the Mac clones that Jobs shut down when he came back to Apple and saved the company. Steve Jobs always wowed me with the latest product and how it was built, marketed, designed and delivered.
So in looking at the many infographics on the web I found this infographic from Infographic Labs that shows a view of the world without Apple that shows Steve Jobs’ impact.
The World Without Apple from Infographic Labs
Last week during the first Monday Night Football game I watched the ad for The Johnny Cash Project on ESPN. I was blown away for two reasons.
This week’s infographic is from Penn-Olson and gives a great timeline of the history of marketing channels. My personal introduction to this graphic starts with guerrilla marketing in college and integrated marketing communications when I started my professional career. Since then we’ve seen an explosion of marketing channels mostly due to the Internet and web. Click on the image to see the full size image.
Source: www.penn-olson.com
I saw the program for a social media conference recently that had 16 unique hashtags peppered throughout the agenda program. My first reaction was why? Some of the hashtags were the city and state name of the event location while others were plain generic like #Day1 and #blogging. The event had a unique name that should have been the main hashtag used to create awareness of the event. However by placing up to five hashtags for each agenda item the event hashtag got lost.
This is the wrong strategy for several reasons. First it dilutes the main brand that you are trying to promote and position. Secondly tracking the tags to measure chatter volume will be inaccurate when you have tags like #RaleighNC or #SeattleWA that may be used by tourists or economic development tweeters. Third and most important, you are confusing the very people attending the event that need to understand how to use social media effectively to communicate.
Most of the seasoned professionals in any discipline go to events for two reasons: to speak and to network. They don’t go for professional development and education. Sure they may pick up a few tips but they are not there to ramp up knowledge quickly. The attendees that shell out their hard earned money are there for that. They want to build up expertise quickly, find starting points for new projects and save time determining what thought leadership blogs they should be reading.
A novice may see multiple hashtags and wonder what they are, what purpose do they serve and how are they used? By bombarding them with multiple keywords in hashtags the event staf is confusing them and not teaching best practices. Part of me thinks that the reasoning behind putting multiple hashtags on a conference agenda or signage is to look sophisticated, smart and savvy. This is when I love to yell at these people through my screen, “You’re doing it wrong!”
Tom Webster (@webby2001) puts out a tweet when he speaks at or attends events stating, “For those of you following at home, the hashtag is…” Tom gets it and knows that there are interested people not at the event that want to share in the information and knowledge being presented. Multiple hashtags makes it frustrating and irritating for those following the event and not realizing that the hashtag they are tracking is only one of several.
What do you think? Is having multiple event hashtags smart or confusing?
I found this DIY Infographic Production by Voltier Creative that both informs and educates on infographic benefits and production. I find infographics like this instrumental in educating novice users about how infographics are more than an educational tool. The section where it talks about SEO, marketing and advertising is great to justify having your graphic designer spend time creating a great infographic. From a project management view, this graphic outlines your major tasks and gives you a roadmap for your project plan.
Created By Voltier Creative
This week I did a bit of reliving my youth. On Tuesday I went to see one of my favorite bands from my twenty-something days, Primus! We had time before the show and went to Poole’s Diner to grab a few drinks a something to eat. Now I’ve eaten at the original Poole’s Lunch Diner and the Vertigo that took over the space back in the 90s. I loved the Vertigo for their food, atmosphere and even spent several New Year’s Eve celebrations there.
I’m a big nostalgia freak and have to admit I miss some of my old Raleigh downtown hangouts. Back then downtown was not trendy, in fact it was a dump. And I don’t say that to be mean, just being honest. There were not many places to go. You did have a great community though. You knew all the people that owned the place, tended bar and cooked. But I’m older now, don’t live downtown anymore and eating out usually involves a kids meal these days. I entered Poole’s with memories of some of the great dishes that Vertigo served and wondering what the new version of Poole’s would be like.
A few things struck me as I entered Poole’s. The funky artwork was gone. Vertigo had some really cool paintings from local artists. The menu is on chalkboards in order to allow for frequent changes. I’m not a fan of having to get up and read a menu from the wall but I understand and appreciate the uniqueness. Anyway I tweeted that I was at Poole’s and missed the Vertigo but had not had the food yet, keeping an open mind.
A few minutes after my food arrived the Poole’s Twitter account @poolesdiner asked me how my meal was, specifically naming the dishes that I had ordered. Talk about real time personalization! I was impressed. They were listening to what I said and saw an opportunity to turn a skeptic into a fan. I noticed the chef sitting on the other side of the bar and working on a laptop. I assume it was Ashley Christensen, the owner, who was tweeting with me. She must have recognized me from my avatar photo and then matched my order accordingly.
I thanked them for asking and even told them the mac and cheese was the best I’ve ever had. They eventually sent over a cookie platter for desert on the house. Now I was really impressed. I had posted a few photos on Instragram and tagged the location to show them some love. The food was excellent and the service was good. I’ve seen many restaurants tweet away about specials they are having or respond to requests for reservations. But this was my first experience where the conversation was spontaneous.
Here are my takeaways from this experience:
The only recommendation I would give Poole’s and Ashley is that she should have come over and introduced herself. That would have been the icing on the cake. A personal relationship stemming from a single tweet in less than an hour is a great way to make a fan for life and possibly a friend. All in all I congratulate Poole’s on their social media strategy and engagement.
