Facebook now has stock photos!

Facebook is making strides to be more friendly to advertisers. From the inclusion of a support staff for questions to increasingly opening more and more analytics and targeting options, Facebook is actively striving to make the experience better for advertisers.

One step they have taken is to add free stock photos for ads on their page. More than just stock photos, they are from ShutterStock, which is one of the premier providers of stock photos on the internet. Even if you have a photographer or imagery this might help in a pinch.

For example: While working on a recent ad for my business, the option was given to me to use “Free Stock Images”.

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They also preload some images they thought I might like based on my product.

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This is a great product upgrade for Facebook. But almost always, photos of your product and service will be better that stock photos.

 

 

Land Rover’s Storytelling on Instagram

Land Rover took creativity on Instagram to a new level recently. It uses Instagram in a way I have never see or thought of before. It uses the grid of all the photos to make its own image composite image. It took a lot of planning to pull off but when you go to either of their two accounts: Solitude in Sawtooth or Brotherhood of Wonderstone (click for the weblink but it looks better on your phone) you can scroll continuously down through a seem-less image story. Additionally  there are videos scattered throughout that have different tips for wilderness survival and fun. Beautiful job Land Rover!

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Candidate Logos Part 2: Republicans (Part 2)

Even though the election is not until next fall, the presidential campaigns have kicked off. While this is super frustrating to many, including myself, one of the upsides is you get to see lots of important branding. In this series of posts I am going to be evaluating the top candidates logos. How do I determine the top candidates? I used this study by the Washington Post.  This will be a three post series. The first post will be dedicated to the Democrat candidates and the next two will be dedicated to the Republican candidates (because there are currently so very many of them). (Read about the Democrats Logos Here and the first half of the Republicans here.)

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Rand Paul:

Visual appeal- 8
Symbolism- 8
Execution- 8
Total-24
Rand Paul is a man on fire. He wants change and with this aggressive logo, I think he communicates that clearly. It works well in different colors and it is my favorite. Simple but effective.

 

 

 

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Mike Huckabee

Visual appeal- 6
Symbolism- 2
Execution- 5
Total-14
Nothing crazy going on here for Huckabee. If there is intentional symbolism here, I am completely missing it! Instead it looks like they selected some random abstract shapes and threw in a few stars. And the kerning between the K and A is way to close.

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Jeb Bush

Visual appeal- 8
Symbolism- 4
Execution- 8
Total-20
Well someone is clearly trying to avoid associating himself with his brother. The natural move in a family such as this would be to invoke the fame. This is the most light hearted of the republican logos. I think the choice of an exclamation point is setting him up for a alternate logo with an upside down exclamation point trying to court the Spanish speaking vote. Also what an interesting b.

 

 

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Scott Walker

Visual appeal- 8
Symbolism- 8
Execution- 8
Total-24
Probably the most creative inclusion of American Imagery this year. The block flag in place of the E strangely works for me. I think it would even be clear in one color. I feel like this candidate is a strong American loving candidate. Mission accomplished logo.

 

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Donald Trump

Visual appeal- 4
Symbolism- 2
Execution- 4
Total-10
Trump doesn’t need a creative logo. Everyone knows who he is. I think that has more to do with his poll ratings then his true popularity. But this logo is exceptionally plain, thus the low rating.

How do people learn about new products?

How do people learn about new products? Guess what? Word of Mouth still reigns supreme!

In a new great chart from Marketing Charts, the reasons why someone would buy a new product come out. A few notes: there are different countries in the mix here and age demographics are not shared. That being said we can learn a lot from these trends. Here are a few notes:

•Word of Mouth is the best way to gain new customers. While listening to ‘experts’ talk about a product dropped 11%, friends and family told me about it it only dropped 4%. A rejection of ‘experts’ is something that is growing strong in our generation due to the flood of facts we deal with everyday. For more issues and products its easy to google something and find an opposing fact (or pseudo-fact). This survey shows a drop in word of mouth but I think they are drawing a line between word of mouth and social media which as I explain in the next paragraph is not really that different.

• Social Media is growing and its really word of mouth for the next generation. Someone once said, “If billboards are fireworks, social media is a bonfire.” Fireworks are short bursts of entertainment and could describe many forms of advertising but social media is designed to allow a conversation to happen about your product or service. Social Media will increasingly be a tool that is used to sway’s peoples minds about a product because it is the word of mouth in the tech world we live in today. [bctt tweet=”Social Media will increasingly be a tool that is used to sway’s people because it is the word of mouth in the tech world. “]

•TV Ads are prominent but faced a huge drop and I suspect this will only continue. Traditional media is going to continue to suffer from a drop in power due to demographic changes and the adoption of technology. TV is going to become less and less powerful unless they do something about it’s viewership and data.  Here are some of my other thoughts about traditional media.
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All of this is great data for us to help improve our sales! Lets put it to use!

People love free shipping emails and other tips!

Marketing Charts recently released a great chart documenting what types of communicates lead to customer purchases. This is extremely helpful if you offer a product. Of course each businesses’s audience is different and will respond to things differently. One restaurant I work with responds well to amazing text deals but email can sometimes be a struggle.

Here is the chart:

Marketing Chart's Research

 

Some interesting notes from this research:

1. Retargeting is at the bottom of the list. I wonder if people artificially lowered this number because it creeps them out. But it is interesting that direct mail ranks higher on the list. I suppose it has a lot to do with the quality of the direct mail list you buy.

2. What is interesting is that the top three items are all emails! I love email marketing.  Email is a great form of permission marketing and its something businesses should always be thinking about, “How do we increase our permission base?”.

3. The Staggering drop off between two and three. Free shipping and discounts reign supreme here. I suspect this tactic will become more and more prominent as we increasingly stop buying things in brick and mortar locations and instead switch to online stores. Free shipping will be the gold standard and is already used by things like Amazon prime to attract consumers.

Improving Efficiency & Not Angering Customers

a smart glass

Frequently when companies improve their efficiency they end up angering customers because they hurt the customer experience. Today’s blog comes from an experience I had this weekend with a small punch cup at a church function that showed me how a company improved efficiency and didn’t ruin my customer experience.

A big business lesson comes from this small cup:

a smart glass

The beautiful part about this cup is that I did not initially notice the change. I simply picked up the cup and filled it with lemonade, like I had done many times at church events. I only noticed this change after I finished the lemonade and was staring at the cup, wishing there was more lemonade!

Can you see the barely visible line around the halfway point of the cup? That line divides the construction of the cup: a strong upper portion  by which 99%* on customers pick up and hold the cup and a thinner bottom half to conserve plastic. The bottom portion is noticeably thinner but I most likely would not have noticed if I hadn’t lost focus on what was happening!

The company may have saved 1-5%* of the plastic from each cup but when you make millions of these cups every year that is a huge savings! The engineer whose idea this was deserves a raise!

This is a brilliant execution of an idea that has lead to things like extremely thin plastic bags at the grocery store that irritate everyone!

So the question is: how can you improve efficiency without compromising the customer experience?

 

*I made these estimates up.

Go Daddy wins the Superbowl

Go Daddy Puppies

Go Daddy Puppies

I have been avoiding Go Daddy ads for years now. They are usually so raunchy that I just change the channel or look away. This behavior continued when I saw “Go Daddy ad causes a stir” on my Facebook timeline this morning. Then my wife told me she thought it was funny. So I checked it out. Once again Go Daddy creates an ad that generates as much or more coverage from controversy as from actually ad placement. This time it doesn’t feel like they were aiming for controversy but some companies are just better at finding it then others. The ad is well made and funny even if the message irritates some people. Here is the video:

Also in this debacle we get a lesson from the school of “always being on your toes”. HostGator decided that it could maximize this situation for its benefit. This is the ad that came up when I googled ‘Go Daddy Puppy Commercial’:

Hostgator loves puppies

 

Well done HostGator.  This might be as on the same level if not on the same scale as the now famous Oreo ad during the super bowl power outage. Maybe we all need to watch our competitors ads just to pounce with a witty retort when they make a mistake!

 

 

TV is changing

 

TV is going to change dramatically in the next few years and this week it took a big step that way.
Streaming services are growing!

The chart above from Marketing Charts shows a stat that we probably already knew: On Demand video services are growing significantly. 76% of all households in America use some sort of media on demand. This statistic could be artificially high because it contains DVR’s which is become more standard with modern telecommunications. I think it would be safe to say 50% of households in America have a streaming service.

The number of cord cutters (aka people who do not have cable in the home) is growing. initially some thought it might be a victim of the recession but as the economy returns to full strength the number of families without cable has not wavered much. Premium tv is becoming aware of this increasingly large group of people. ESPN decided to do something about it and in doing so might have placed the first nail in the coffin of cable/satellite tv.

ESPN has announced that it is joining a completely cable free streaming program with a few other channels offered through DISH Network for $20 per month. ESPN is one of the reasons most people stay on a cable subscriptions! Why would ESPN do this? Ad revenue. As cord cutters continue to grow the value of ads on channels exclusively on cable and Atlanta networks will begin to drop.

Imagine a future where you will be able to buy small packages of the channels you actually want to watch. This is great for consumers and for local advertisers. Local advertisers frequently get mixed in with all the channels a media company has access to. Advertisers will be able to better target their ads to specific packages of channels that their customers will be watching.

This maybe the first nail in the coffin of cable/satellite tv but do not clear your schedules for their funerals anytime soon. This transformation will be years in the making and will be restricted by fast broadband access. Not everywhere is as lucky Jackson with our 1 GIG fiber network. Thanks JEA!

 

 

 

 

Facebook gets less free.

Dont Just stand there!

Dont Just stand there!

Facebook is getting less free. I blogged about this previously but now Facebook is going to further push for paid ads. I am not sure how much further this can go but it may eventually get to where no one that likes your Facebook page unless you pay for the ad. It will become more comparable to TV. You may have  TV commercial and people maybe a fan of your business but unless you pay the station your ad will not running!

Check out the Wall Street Journal article on Facebook restricting reach: New Facebook Rules will Sting Entrepreneurs.

So what do you do instead? Well don’t just stand there,  build non rented marketing channels. Get permission from your fans to communicate to them. Try using email and I like to use MailChimp.

Effective Emails

Why do people open emails from companies? What makes an effective marketing email? Well these stats from Marketing Charts seem to show that deals are the primary reason that emails effect buying behavior.

But this also covers info regarding other forms of marketing. Email ranks at the top of this list and I think it might have something to do about permission marketing. You have to opt in to receive those emails which means you are already interested in the product. If you are the marketer you have already qualified the prospect. Permission marketing is the way to go!

 

Email works when deals are offered