Deep Dives

(A good read for Internet Marketing Experts to keep updated with current happenings in SMO)

Yahoo Buzz seems to be creating quite a buzz these days. The soon to be launched service(February 26th) is predicted to be a competitor to both Google and Digg . On the social front, Yahoo does seem to be more eager to integrate social search results with its regular web results. We have all seen Yahoo’s test of integrating del.icio.us results with the web results. However del.icio.us and digg do differ in the kind of content that becomes popular on both. While Digg is seen as a Social News service, del.icio.us is seen as a social tagging service. A blend of both is needed in a regular search. For example, if I am searching for a Jane Fonda news item, i would trust Digg tags more than del.icio.us tags. Alternately if I am searching for html resources, I would trust del.icio.us tags more than Digg to find useful content.

Is Y! Buzz an effort by Yahoo to bridge the gap and provide social search across all subjects and genres of the online web?? If it is it is a very wise decision and one that could help Yahoo gain some search market share.

Here are a few of the screen shots of the service (from http://valleywag.com/357006/screenshots-of-yahoo-buzz-a-digg-competitor):

Clean look and feel
It is the one of the few social media sites that doesn’t have a cluttered look and feel to it. A few clicks and you’re ready to microblog. I think the first impression matters a lot.Twitter scores vary well on that and appears uncomplicated to use for the first time visitor.

Follow and Learn: For me this is another amazing feature of Twitter. It allows me to hook onto my gurus and understand what they are doing. On the net, this could lead to a treasure trove of knowledge and understanding. It also attracts the attention of guys whom you are following and you could gain more visibility in terms of the activities you perform on a daily basis

Don’t wrack your head in trying hard to write
Write whatever you want to: I think many people like me face the basic issue of not knowing what to write. What I like about Twitter is the fact that it asks a very fundamental question “What are you doing?”… One that is easy to answer and one that also puts a check on the activities you do in a day. I personally, would feel embarrassed if I had to write “sleeping” for the entire 24 hours in a dayJ

No Long stories:
Your post is limited to a maximum of 140 characters…so no long stories…a brief answer to a brief question. A character limit also ensures that you answer the question with the optimum answer.

Easy configuration on mobile and ims : This is definitely a thumbs up feature of Twitter. No time to login to your computer or on a flight or somewhere where you cannot access the net??…Use your mobile instead…and the answer of 140 characters ensures its simply an sms being transferred.

The interface created for advertisers is very simple and convenient to use. In four simple steps one can generate an ad copy ready for display across selected demographic profiles.

Choosing the Audience

Facebook Social ads are a perfect example of Contextual Advertising. You can target your ad across a country, state/province and city. You can define the gender, the age group, the educational background, political views and the workplace as well.

You can also define the keywords as well in terms of interests, favorites etc.

Ad Creation

The ad creation step is actually quite simple. In three easy steps your ad is ready for display

The ad’s done. Now define your budget based on impressions or clicks.
Facebook defines CPC and CPV as the following:

“For any available ad inventory, Facebook selects the best ad to run based on the cost per click or impression and ad performance.
If you choose a Pay for Clicks (CPC) model, you will also bid on how much you are willing to pay for each click on your ad. Facebook will display your ad in the Ad Space, News Feed, or both. The amount you are charged will never exceed your daily budget.
If you choose a Pay for Views (CPM) model, you will also bid on how much you are willing to pay for every thousand impressions of your ad. You will need to select if you want your ad to appear in News Feed or the Ad Space. The amount you are charged will never exceed your daily budget.”

The analytics can easily be tracked through reports generated by Facebook.

The Positioning of the ad:

The online advert would be placed either on the left column under the applications section or directly in the ‘News Feed’ section of a user’s profile page.

The usefulness of Facebook as an option to advertise is increasing on a daily basis. With a huge patronage and an ever increasing user base, it is a good option. With a focused and a well targeted ad campaign, it is one of the best options available in the Social Media Marketing space and could be an effective internet branding strategy for your product or service.

The primary focus of any advertising campaign is to target the right customer. The same is true for internet advertising as well. If I am selling mobile phones with fm and music storage capabilities, I might define my target customer to be between 18 and 24, college going, travels around a lot, likes to be hep.

I could define his online profile as being part of music forums and communities, specifically Rock, being part of music download sites, interacting on a regular basis with friends (other rockers) on music.

Now if I could create an online advert that employs use of his online profile and uses his friend/s for the advertisement and display the ad on his profile page on a community, the chances of his seeing the ad increase by almost 100% and thus I am assured of better targeting.

The community is Facebook and the ads created are called Social ads. Generic ad copies can also be created such as those for Google Adwords.

In my next post I would be discussing the interface and the creation of a generic ad copy using Facebook ads.

For a while now I have been trying to fathom, what exactly is meant by Facebook’s Social Ads and how it would be a boon to advertisers.
I first needed to understand the popularity enjoyed by Facebook. I also needed to understand the true demographic constitution in terms of age of users of Facebook.
According to a Comscore release Facebook was being used by around 3.69 million people (now stated to be around 5.5 million) in the UK in March. The year on year traffic growth was estimated to be 1,617% which was staggering. The weekly growth was estimated to be at 3% and the audience share was put at 16%.UK is the fastest growing market for Facebook.
In the US Facebook attracted 30.6 million U.S. visitors during September compared with 68.4 million at Myspace. The growth rate however was much better for Facebook.

This growth is uniform across the world.Facebook‘s active users have been pegged at 50 million and increasing.

It is this popularity that prompted both Google and Microsoft to bid for a 1.6% stake in the company. The success of Facebook can be gauged from the fact that Microsoft evaluated the company at $15 billion and paid $240 million for the 1.6% stake. Yahoo has also tried to acquire the company in the past.
The Demographic profile of Facebook users in the U.S is as follows:

It is interesting to note that the highest growth in terms of users has been in the age group of 25-34 at 181%. In terms of numbers, the highest number of unique visitors seems to be from the 35+ segment.

In the UK, 54% of UK users are over 25, and the over-35s are the fast growing age group.

What this implies is that Facebook’s effectiveness as a marketing tool seems to transcend across all age groups.As such it presents itself as an attractive opportunity for advertisers.

In my next post I will try and define the concept of Social ads and how Facebook provides better targeting through the same.

Borrowing from Warren Buffets idea, let me build on my last post on competitive advantage.

Any competitive advantage which helps a company price its services/products in a manner which is relatively independendent of the market, has to be sustainable for it to create value for its shareholders. If the company has to spend lot of capital to maintain that advantage ( if they have to cannibalize their own product line to launch new ones…as in technology companies, to stay ahead of the curve) the value created for shareholder will not be maximized.

The best businesses from shareholders viewpoint then are the ones which will have mindspace with the consumer ( sustainable competitive advantage of being a brand) and are consumed frequently like fast foods or daily utility items or specialized business services.

These businesses with minimum competitive advantage maintenance cost will be inflation proof( for they can raise prices to counter inflation) and hence give high returns on either total equity or capital employed.

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The random arrow created the confusion.

Shot with a medium tilt
head drawn to the hilt,
It was a game she was playing.

Unsure of the format and its intent
I inquired, to ascertain what she meant.
To realize that it was her vocation
Of teasing whoever wanted to get her address,
appointment and location.

Smart as I am, I understood the rules.
If you play, you lose.
If you stand by the side
Not participating in the ride
Chances are that she will reveal her fraility
Away from visible coquettish reality.

She will let you see you are her and she is she
and that ancient force unites to creates the whole
from which you can temporarily separate but never elope.

Slowly as her true self unfurled, I realized
That it was I who was making her real to the eyes.
Vague, tapestry of her charms was always there
Waiting to be formulated by that appreciative stare.

Knowing the rules had set me free
Of past forms, future orgasms, present locality
To appreciate her naked symmetry.

Our full circle romance was then an interplay
Between constructs, chance and clay
on the ever-changing periphery of night and day.

As far as I see, there are two ways in which companies meet competition.

1) Companies compete with each other on commodity services/products. They inted to sell and get a larger market share with a price advantage over their rivals. To get this lower cost product/service or the price advantage, they have to refine their process or bring any kind of buying/selling/sourcing efficiency. Once they achieve this and lower prices, the competition has to follow suit to be able to sustain. Hence they have to bring in a similar cost advantage as well. So if they are able to match the lower priced company for pricing, the second round of pricing war starts.
So as is apparent this is a vicisous circle with depleting profit margins.

I would believe 90% of the companies in the world will fall into this category.

2) Then there are those companies those have pricing freedom from their competition for thier product/service.

They might have this because:
i) They might be operation a local monopoly.
ii) They might have a unique product/service
iii) They might have a unique market positioning/recall ( branding).

I would believe that less than 10% companies fall into this categories.

However it is companies in this 10% slot who make history and create investor wealth.

I was once asking a negotation trainer, what is one thing that he thinks is the most important for a succesful negotation. He replied: Instead of one attribute let me tell you two( I guess thats where negotation starts ) which I think are most critical:

1) Do you homework thoroughly before you participate in a negotation.
2) Have a Plan B.

Well I am delighted to inform that my first book on online marketing: “Lunch That Google Hosted” has been accepted by a publisher.The first print run will hopefully be coming out in the next month.

We are though still evaluating the legal implications of using Googles name in the title of the book.

GAP Analysis:
The information about online marketing and its various components is scattered and fragmented. If you wanted to start in this space you will take days to order the information in any meaningful format. Adding to this complexity are the various components of online space like : Search Marketing, Rich Media Marketing, Local Advertising, Blogs, Podcasting…… where mostly information is avaialble in one space in any book and other areas are covered elsewhere. Then because of highly dynamic nature of this domain it becomes difficult to sift news from knowledge.

For these reasons I have always felt a need for one book that I can give to my guys to read to understand the domain. I needed a book which is technical about the domain and assumes that you are a novice. From that standpoint then, it starts to unravel the various layers of online marketing in an organized manner.

In other words I wanted a book which I could give to a person who was uninitiated in online advertising and marketing space, and who upon perusing it would know enough to start a career in it.

A 360 degree, Online Advertising and Marketing Handbook.

Since, to my knowledge, no such book is available in the market at the moment so I decided to write one.

Who can Benefit:

Though this was primarily written to help people in our companies ( Mosaic and Mediaestate) to pick up domain knowledge, I believe this book will be very uselful for:

1) People wanting to switch to online marketing.
2) Marketing professionals in companies who will have to know online marketing to do complete justice to their careers.
3) Media planners and agencies
4) SMB enterprenuers who want to know how to mesure and have realistic expectations from their marketing campaigns.
5) MBA and other media students.

After the book is published I will be posting the index of the book also in this blog