Posts from — September 2009

A few days ago I recieved a very spammy looking message from twitter user Liquid 4 Health (I’m not going to link to them based on principle). I like to give people the benefit of the doubt so I thought I should check out their profile and see if maybe they were just a little misguided.

Turns out I was right. They are a spam account and they just keep pushing out the same messages over and over and over with no interaction at all. The biggest shocker of all is when I saw that they had blatantly ripped off the Mozy logo (linked because they are the good guys here).

Exhibit A – Logo of our beloved Mozy

Exhibit B – Logo of the spamming Liquid4Health

Before I get into the heart of this post  I’m going to finish the back story, so bear with me.

I have to express complete awe at them thought they could get away with something like this. Now of course being the concerned citizen I am I reported them as spam, and also alerted Mozy of the affront via Twitter.

This type of blatant ripping off is just not acceptable in any way, but what I didn’t expect was what followed from the local (and even out of state) community at large.

There was a miniature cavalcade of outrage about the blatant rip off that continued with random RT’s and such for the next hour or so, but here’s a good snap shot of the immediate outcry.

As my good friend JdNorton pointed out on the site when you land is a claim to ethics and where we get into the meat of this post.

Now, you would think that a company so concerned with ethics that it’s part of their landing flash animation wouldn’t be ripping off the logos of well known companies. They would be using their own logos and promoting their product in a much more altruistic manner.

The good news is that they didn’t. The bad news is that someone who bought into their MLM did, and now their image is being tarnished because of one particular unscrupulous MLMer.

How does this relate to anything else? Well in your company you probably have people who represent the company in many ways. If they’re tied directly to the company and it states that in their Twitter or other social media profile then everything they do will be tied to the company as well.

This is a VERY real fear of companies and individuals alike. Recently I had the opportunity to speak with a representative of the local government and this was the #1 concern brought up when dealing with social media and it’s application for spreading a message.

That is why you need to have a stance on how to ethicly do business. Once you do it’s your responsibility to monitor your MLM “partners”, Franchisee’s, employees, etc. You need to be aware of how they’re representing themselves because it all leads back to you and your business. This is yet another good argument for having a social media department in your business, practice, agency, etc.

Social media management aside, ethics is something that should be taken far more serious than it is. It isn’t a marketing buzz word, it’s a core value that you should embrace. Not just because if you don’t that “buzz word” will be a huge target for your critics, but because it’s the right thing to do.

This isn’t meant to scare anyone away from social media, it’s meant to be a warning. A reminder that you need to have policies in place, and decide on the best way to display your company online. Don’t play fast and loose with your reputation and how your business and the members of it carry themselves or the ethics you uphold.

It all adds up, and can very quickly come back to haunt you.

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

p.s. We’re still giving away free copies of Twittfaced, if you want to see how you can get your mitts on a copy go here: 4 ways to win a free copy of TwittFaced!

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This is just a quick FYI to let you know I have another article published on Mashable today. HOW TO: Make Facebook Your Company Newsroom. Since my last Mashable article was 30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook it seems like I have a theme going on. Please check it out and let me know what you think, thanks.

Josh

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Jacob Morgan (my co-author on TwittFaced and all around awesome guy) wrote a post about The Gap and ROI that first made me think he was describing what sounded like an Awareness campaign and tried to apply ROI to it due to a very unfortunate use of the term.

After giving it some thought and reading the ClickZ article he quoted I’m very sure that at least part of this campaign is awareness based and so invalidates some of the need for ROI. Awareness isn’t concerned with ROI (it’s missing part of the equation). No no, awareness calls for impact!

The article quote that fired off his post  is where the majority of the debate in the comments stem from and is also where I see some underlying clues to the true meaning of this campaign. Both the comments on his site and Clickz are worth a read, I’d recommend giving them a quick run through. Anyways, on to the quote:

“Channing said The Gap had set no numerical benchmarks to determine success in the campaign, but rather would look at “how much consumers interact with the brand” to gauge ROI.”

When it comes to marketing there are 4 basic types of campaigns that can be run, all of which can utilize social media, and before I explain the 2 ways I see this quote (and their current campaign) being taken I’m going to do a quick review of those 4 types and then quickly go over some GAP campaign info. I promise I’ll make it as painless as possible.

4 basic types of marketing campaigns

1. Acquisition / Lead Generation  – These types of campaigns are used to gather information (like email addresses, profiles, home addresses, etc) with the goal of winding up with a list of people who are most likely to buy from you. This activity can (and usually is) driven by ROI and when started can have a projected ROI that is based on previous activities (unless it’s your first go, then no projected… this is important for later in the post).

2. Awareness – This type of campaign can be used to increase the awareness of certain products or the brand itself. Often times this is used by established companies (like Chevy with their eco campaign… or the GAP) to keep themselves fresh in peoples minds and assist them in their ongoing bid to stay relevant in the current culture.

3. Brand – Here the goal is to associate the company with it’s services and offerings. This type of campaign will have hooks into the sales channels, marketing materials will be laden with copy points surrounding what it is, does, or offers and will typically have a CTA (call to action). That CTA will be to get you onto their sales page (and into their sales funnel) or into their store for a killer deal, etc. The end result is they want your money now!

4. Loyalty – When a company launches this type of campaign their goal is to reward their current, frequent buyers or to entice customers away from competitors with their awesome loyalty program. This can take the form of a discount card, some kind of point system, or keeping a list of your best customers and having an event in their honor. Marketing this event or program is the point in this campaign. You want people to have the desire to be your loyal customer because if they are they’ll be part of an exclusive group that gets XYZ benefit. People love exclusivity, it makes us feel special.

GAP campaign info (quotes are from the article)

Goal:
“We were really looking to reach out to fashionistas and influence audiences and even skeptics of The Gap to start a conversation about how Gap has built this line of denim from the ground up,” she said. They wanted to “lend credibility to the story.”  

Note: Sounds like awareness to me, they’re telling a story about their new product and making a bid for cultural relevance.

Assets:
FaceBook page – “acts as the centerpiece for the online campaign, where viewers can watch a video of Rada Shadick, Gap’s “fit engineer,” explaining the development of the new denim line, called “1969″ (named after the year The Gap was founded), and see which fit might work for them. Users can also upload photos and videos featuring their own “born to” statement and click through to Gap.com to make purchases.”

Note: The “make purchases” part sounds tacked on because it’s just a feature of the site that was already there, there is no special attention given to sales. There is no mention of how it’s going to direct traffic to specific pages (funneling) to enhance the chances of  buying. In fact after looking at the GAP Fan Page it’s 100% informational and engagement based. There is no sales pitch, no call to action for a purchase, nothing. The only link to their site is a link on their info tab.

Custom Crafted Banner Ads – “for several different blog partners saying what each was born to do. For example, the ads on Glam.com say “Born to Set Trends,” and the ads on PopSugar say “Born to Strategize.” Other blog partners include Mashable, Thrillist and Idolator”

Note: This part of the campaign ended on 08-17 soI can’t tell you where they directed to, but I can tell you it sounds like they are personalizing the message to make people associate more with the brand.

iPhone App – “called the StyleMixer that lets users mix and match outfits and interact with friends on The Gap’s Facebook page. The app will also reveal undisclosed “surprises” when near a Gap store.”

Note: Sounds to me like they are getting people to start thinking about their brand in a whole new light and re-introduce themselves to their target market in ways relevant to them… that would be awareness.

Analysis

So looking back at the evidence that was brought before me by the article I can conclude it isn’t a brand campaign. There is no call to action to do anything other than make your own ads, be their fan, and play with their app. No CTA to buy anything or click on anything that injected you into a sales funnel.

It’s not a loyalty campaign because there are no rewards for previous customers, in fact the whole goal is to get their name in front of new customers or people who had never thought of GAP as a place they would shop at.

It doesn’t look like an acquisition or lead generation campaign on the surface. I went through the whole site and the only thing I saw was a survey I took where they ask about different styles of jeans and where you’ve seen them advertised and ask very specific questions about online campaigns.

That leaves us with Awareness.

I realize this is a longer than a usual post so for the sake of your scrolling finger I’m going to post the quote from above again.

“Channing said The Gap had set no numerical benchmarks to determine success in the campaign, but rather would look at “how much consumers interact with the brand” to gauge ROI.”

The 2 ways I see this

(aka my favorite)
This is an awareness campaign. There is no indication anywhere in all of this that there is any path to a sales funnel or that there is any other motive behind this other than to get people to see the brand is fun, culturally relevant, and to promote their new line of jeans while they’re at it. NOTHING, in the outlined assets above, takes you to a specific sales page for their new line of jeans, nothing asks you to buy, heck nothing save one tiny link on the info tab even takes you to their website.

There is no sales push, there is no reason behind any of this other than for GAP to say “We’re still here and we have something we think is neat”. The only place I discovered where they were trying to sell anything is on the GAP Twitter stream where they give a couple links to pages where you can buy stuff at a discount. Even there, the majority of the links they sent out directed people to the FaceBook group. Heck, even their campaign URL ( http://www.borntofit.com) just redirects to their FaceBook group.

Everything in this campaign smells like awareness to me. I think the problem stems to a misuse of the term ROI. The fact that they’re not setting benchmarks right now doesn’t mean they aren’t collecting numbers. In fact, I guarantee they are or else they wouldn’t be able to see how much the consumers are interacting with the brand so they could measure the engagement.

If this is the first time they are running this kind of an awareness campaign then they can’t set benchmarks. They have nothing to base it off of, they have no idea what numerical benchmark to strive for… yet. As they measure their engagement (which they are obviously looking at) they can then easily set benchmarks after a month for their continued progress.

• Simply stated I see this as a new style of awareness campaign for them with a tragic misuse of the term ROI.

(aka the other explanation)
This could be part of an overarching campaign that involves awareness and is hitting the first step of the buying cycle (Interest, Research, Purchase). They are using all of the content and exposure to assist customers in the first two steps and using the information gathered to equate their ROI for when step 3 happens.

How is that done you might ask? Well it’s a bit technical so if you’re sick of me talking about this already you might want to skip this and just leave a comment on your thoughts below. If you like where I’m going with this then please continue reading.

In lead generation campaigns that use paid resources (PPC, Media buys, etc) to get people to sign up for something for free (newsletter, mailer, webinar, etc) you have to know what each lead is worth to you. This can only be done by experimenting, testing, monitoring, measuring, etc to determine lead worth (ie: can’t set $$$ benchmarks right off the bat because you’re missing part of the equation).

So lets say in a lead generation campaign you use PPC to get people to sign up for your free newsletter. At first glance you’re just throwing money away and there is no positive ROI. However, if you’ve been doing your due diligence you would know that based on your data each customer is worth an average of $4 due to what they buy from your free newsletter. So as long as you keep your CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) below $4 you’re making money and have a positive ROI.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that all of this stuff by GAP is to collect a list. A list of people who use social media, engage and interact with the brand. They make a loyal following online using FaceBook, Twitter, and iPhone apps. From their previous use of mailing lists, email lists, etc they should already know what each customer they get on their list is worth.

They can then take their engagement metrics, find out how many are “very engaged” (which would indicate an inclination to buy) and based on their previously collected marketing & CPA data they could then apply those numbers to the ones they collected from their engagement metrics and get a projected ROI (told you it would come up). Now, time will only tell if their projected ROI matches up with the reality of it, but this is a way to calculate ROI (at least a projected one anyways) from engagement.

If they are getting a mass quantity of fans that they will then later send coupons, Internet only deals, etc and be using the various form of social media to build their lists then ROI wouldn’t be measured until later. ROI can’t be calculated unless you are actually trying to get money out of people. ROI is a financial metric and only applies when you’re taking on a financial goal, when you actually start pushing product offers and urging people to buy.

• Simply stated, right now it looks like they are in awareness and possibly list building mode. At least until they hit their next phase anyway (which would be a financial phase where ROI is applied).

Conclusion

There’s nothing wrong with the fact that they didn’t set benchmarks right away because all signs point to an awareness campaign. Now, after their first month of collecting engagement data they should start setting engagement benchmarks so they can monitor their progress, but as of right now… it’s not a big deal. There is no indication they are even attempting to get people into a sales funnel of any sort… their goal is awareness.

Yes, they used the term ROI wrong (unless they are applying their engagement data to their CPA model to determine ROI… which is possible, but unlikely) but that doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with how they’re handling the campaign.

Remember, just like any metric ROI is a tool. That’s it. It’s an equation, It’s a way to measure how you’re doing but only when the goal of your campaign is financially based, otherwise you’re missing part of the equation.

So after this journey what do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts after reading Jacob’s post and my take on it all.

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

p.s. We’re giving away free copies of Twittfaced, if you want to see how you can win a copy go here: 4 ways to win a free copy of TwittFaced!

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You read that right, I’ve compiled all of Seth Godin’s free ebooks in one big awesome list. Seth Godin is a fantastic source of  constant information and wisdom. His blog is incredibly insightful and he produces books and ebook left and right.

I was looking through my ebook collection the other day and noticed I had a ton of his ebooks, but didn’t know if I had all of them so I went to his site to see and I was stunned to discover he didn’t have a list of all his free ebooks to download (or at least I didn’t see it). I spent the next hour searching his site for free ebooks and found a couple I didn’t have. After my successful round of scavenging I decided to share my newly acquired treasure with you. Thats’ right, it’s a gall dern ebook fiesta today on Shuaism.

Some of these ebooks are a couple years old and a few things in them are outdated, but the important part, the ideas, are still very valid. You probably already know this, but to download them right click on the link, choose “Save As” or “Save Link As” and save it to your computer. Give ‘em a look and if I missed any that you know of please let me know (send me the link) and I’ll add them to list.

Enjoy!

Things to think about and ideas to help you get the most out of business this year

A guide to getting more done with less and running as lean as possible when bootstrapping your biz.

Learn how to  be pickier about what you do and who you do it for so you can enjoy more of your life.

This book is for anyone who wants more. More traffic, more influence, etc and path of least resistance to help you get there.

A look at a real person’s site (Micah) and how the issues he faced were addressed. You might see some of the same issues in your own site and how to fix them while reading this one.

Flipping the Funnel is all about giving your fans the power to speak up. This one is based around the needs of companies.

This one is based around the need of Non-Profits.

This one is based around politics.

Covers the 2 things your website must do and the 4 things it can cause to happen.

All about getting traffic to your blog or site.

Bad power point and how to fix it!

The ebook that was put together by Seth’s private tribe when he launched his book Tribes. It’s filled with their wisdom

It’s pretty much what it sounds like.

*BullMarket

*Since it’s tied to a charity this one goes to Seth’s site. It’s about companies that can help you make something happen… I think I should be on that list

Bonus links!
While I was putting together I came across 2 articles (1 new, 1 not so new) that really pulled this together. The first is from the man him self Seth Godin about why YOU should write a free ebook. I can speak from experience that good things can come from writing a free ebook, it’s how I got the book deal for TwittFaced.

This second link is a beautiful follow up to the why, it’s the how. Darren Rowse has put together a wonderful guide;  13 Steps to Write and Publish a Free Ebook in 13 Hours.

I hope this whole post is a source of inspiration and a great resource of wisdom and information to you and anyone you share it with.

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

p.s. We’re giving away free copies of Twittfaced, if you want to see how you can get your mitts on a copy go here: 4 ways to win a free copy of TwittFaced!

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Right now we’re running a promotion to give away 8 signed copies of the book. If you’d like to win one go check out 4 ways to win a free copy of TwittFaced!

Josh

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How To Be A Twitter Spammer is a humorous look at Twitter Spam. If you like it, feel free to download it from Scribd (below), or from SlideShare if you prefer.

It’s all 100% hand drawn by me so please enjoy and let me know what you think of it,
Josh

How To Be A Twitter Spammer

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ZizZazz is a maker of powdered energy supplements that come in a little pouch and you then add them to water or other beverages and help give it a bit more of an energy kick.  So what does this have to do Social Media, Internet Marketing and Online Life? Everything.

I haven’t talked about my use of Tumblr or Posterouson here yet (planned post) but I have been testing them both out to determine which I like most and for what reasons. Currently I’m liking Tumblr more than I am Posterous and on my Tumblr page I have been running something called The Great Energy Shot Experiment and am at day 15.

In this little experiment of mine I have been posting up the Nutritional Information of each energy shot I have taken for a comparison and today I absentmindedly threw away the package for my ZizZazz before cateloging the nutrition info, and I talked about that in my post The Great Energy Shot Experiment: Day 15 – ZizZazz.

Within about 20 minutes of sending it out via Twitter I received this tweet from the ZizZazz Twitter account

That’s great! It was absolutely awesome to see that they are obviously listening for mentions of their brand and then following up with it.

I already mentioned in the post that I enjoyed their product (especially when compared to some of the others I’ve had during the experiment), and this was a great little bonus to the experience of their product.

So now here’s the big question. How will that play into my loyalty to the brand?

I don’t like to take these types of things, and have noticed a marked change in my body chemistry and overall self since starting on this journey so I won’t be reaching for any of this stuff on a daily basis ever again. However I will say that being able to talk directly with someone should I have a problem or concern with the product does in fact sway my decision a bit.

Should I hate one of the flavors I can now complain directly to @ZizZazz via Twitter and while they may not be able to do anything about that other than send me a different flavor or coupon for a free one at least I, the consumer, will feel better about my opinion being heard.

I’d like to thank ZizZazz for responding and being willing to help with my situation, and I applaud them for listening to what people are saying.

Have you had a similar experience? Received more than you expected from a brand while using social technologies? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

Thanks for reading,
Josh

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