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?
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?
Google announced its latest entry into social networking this week with The Google+ Project. Today I received an invite to join the network and find myself at a difficult decision. Should I create an account, link to friends and create another online presence? Or should I wait and see if this sticks? Part of me wants to see what it is and how it works. For work I need to have a basic understanding of how social networks influence digital marketing campaigns.
On the other hand will this network be around in a year? Google’s past social media efforts failed. Google Buzz was poorly released and automatically pulled all your contacts into it with little warning. Then if you wanted to kill your account it had reprucussions with other aspects of your Google account so you felt a bit trapped. Google Wave was release with much anticipation and killed off quickly, even though you can still access the site. Like a fine wine, it needed some time to breathe and that did not happen. I know many people will say that it was around a year which in “internet time” is like 10 years but that’s nonsense. Wave had some great collaboration features and had a confusing launch to say the least.
As a marketing person I have to ask why Google has decided to create a competitor to Facebook. I know they are battling for website traffic and users. But part of me wants to say to Google, “stick to what you know and do best!” Search, analytics and collaboration tools are where Google shines. Users go to Google to search, use GMail to communicate, store and share documents on Google Docs and research and track site traffic with AdWords and Analytics. Do people really want to go to Google to share their photos, short messages, what they had for dinner and other minutua we see on Facebook and Twitter all day?
As users do we really want to have another Facebook? I think one is enough for me to keep track of and update. LinkedIn is great for business and I use Twitter to keep informed and update to date on specific topics and communities of friends and others. I’ve enjoyed connecting with people on Facebook. It’s clean, easy to use interface has made it simple to connect with friends and family that I don’t get to see in person as often as I would like. It’s more social than LinkedIn or Twitter. There is critical mass there that allows us to connect with a large portion of our community. Heck no system is perfect and I have several friends and family that Facebook is not a great connector as they are not present or active enough to have a relationship on the platform.
My guess, and I hope I’m wrong, is that Google won’t get a gazillion users on it in less than a year. They will deem it a failure and proably pull the plug. If so will it affect my Google contacts and other account features like Buzz does? If that’s the case then I’m less likely to join it. Do I create a basic presence there just to have an understanding of Google’s social network platform? Will it be worth my time or just another place to update what I’m doing?
So I’m back to my original question: Should I Google+ or Should I Go?
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.
LinkedIn rolled out some new features for company profiles last week. The new features allow you to do more than list your company location, description, Twitter ID and recent blog posts. The is a new link at the top of the companies page called “Services and Products” where you can list your company’s specific product and/or services.
While creating a service listing for my consulting practice I noticed some areas that can stop you in your tracks if you do not think ahead and came up with these tips.
I hope these tips help you update your company’s product or service offering pages on LinkedIn. Below is a screen shot of what my first service offering looks like. You can see the page on my company’s LinkedIn Profile.
LinkedIn Company Services Page
I was on a major company site the other day and wanted to share a page link for an event that a friend and former coworker was going to be featured. I clicked on their share button and selected Twitter as my network. I was then transferred to Twitter with the following text as my message.
Note that I changed the company name as my purpose is not to embarrass them but instead demonstrate how to do it properly.
This is a major fail for several reasons. First the link takes up most of the 140 characters, it should be shortened using a link shortener like bit.ly. Second the title of the event is missing along with the date, company name, speaker, etc. If I want to share this I have to go and copy and paste the info as well as shorten the link. Why have the share button if I’m going to share it the old fashioned way like way back in 2008?
We all want our content shared on the social web. Plugins and tools that allow you to click on an icon and easily share a blog post, video, website link or other content make it easy to do this. So why have a share tool that does not easily do this?
Many times large organizations IT departments don’t look at what tools will best work in the situation. They tend to look at the requirement and fill it. It’s up to the marketing and communication teams to define the requirement in greater detail and provide examples of how share functionality should work as well as how it should look and if tracking is required.
There are several third-party tools that can handle social share including:
Some other questions you may want to ask when selecting a share tool are:
As with any technology you will need to test, test and test again how the tool works with not just social networks but email messages and any communication channel you want to connect to.
Some of you may have noticed that my avatar recently changed and that I have a nice fake moustache on my photo. This is because I’m participating in Movember. Movember challenges men to change their appearance and the face of men’s health by growing a moustache. The rules are simple, start Movember 1st clean-shaven and then grow a moustache for the entire month. The moustache becomes the ribbon for men’s health, the means by which awareness and funds are raised for cancers that affect men. Much like the commitment to run or walk for charity, the men of Movember commit to growing a moustache for 30 days.
Now my reason for joining Team RDU is two-fold. First I want to do my part to help with the fund raising efforts. Second, my father passed away nine years ago to prostate cancer and I really have missed him since. I know that my participation cannot bring him back but it can help others facing prostate cancer. Losing a loved one sucks. And I know there are many men out there much younger than my father was that are facing this terrible disease.
In creating awareness for the campaign our team captain, Greg Ng (@gregoryng) has done something creative and fun, Movember-thon. Some of you know Greg from his web TV show, Freezerburns (@freezerburns) where he reviews frozen food items. Last week Greg announced that he would do a 24-hour live show and sold off time slots for co-hosts to raise money for Movember. I jumped at the chance to participate and help raise awareness for the cause. You can see me tomorrow, November 5 at http://live.freezerburns.com/ at 10 am to see me review a frozen food item with Greg and raise some additional funds for the cause. The event starts at midnight tonight if you want to catch all 24-hours!
Another tactic team members are doing to create awareness and raise funds is to take photos of themselves each day to show the growth of their mustaches. I’m using Daily Mugshot to track my growth. Also each day myself and others are posting photos to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks to spread the word. Movember is not just limited to male participants. Women can join the cause as Mo Sistas and can raise funds.
You can also donate during the entire month of November at http://us.movember.com/mospace/518224/. No amount is too small and I thank you for any contribution you can make, including sharing this post with your friends. At the end of Movember, TeamRDU will be hosting a gala to thank our friends and sponsors. Find out more at http://rdu-movember.eventbrite.com/.
