Blog on Digital Marketing, Social Media, technology and anything else

Advertising on Facebook: bad ads are bad for everyone

I’ve just spent the past hour and a half going through Facebook, looking at the various ads targeted to Irish people and getting more and more annoyed with them. The standard of copy, design and actions after clicking an ad makes me want to bang my head against a wall. If badly designed ads are most common on Facebook it means people will pay less attention to them. This is bad for Facebook from a revenue perspective and bad for advertisers who work hard for good copy as people will self-train themselves to ignore all ads due to bad experiences. Here are some tips on what to do and what not do with examples from this evening.

Here are some tips:

Include an image:
This ad is boring plain text. An image would have gotten our attention more.

Target your ads:
This ad asks are you from Ulster. 3/4 of the population that are outside of Ulster also see this ad. Not smart.

Target your copy:
The ad here knows my age so mentions it in the ad itself. You can target deeper than that though. How about my gender, my employment, my martial status?

Have a landing page if going offsite:
These ads sent us to the front page of the websites. Why? Have a targeted ad send us to a targeted page. Make sure the page is designed to ask an action of the person that’s landed.

This ad sends us to a specific product page but it isn’t streamlined or have the same copy as the ad that sent you there:

If sending to a page, make sure there’s activity.
This ad sends you to a page that looks pretty dead:

If sending to a page for booze or other goods, make it legal
14 year olds can become fans of this booze. Not good.

Marketing a hotel online – Some thoughts

Since the event that the two Ciaras ran in Killarney a while back, I’ve been chatting to some Irish Hotels about online marketing. I’ve shared my thoughts with them and am sharing them again here now.

There are a few ways that a hotel can use online resources such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter to both increase traffic to their website as well as get more people talking about them online and offline. Ranking well in search engines is all well and good but what can you offer if you and a hotel across the road have the same rates and are neck and neck on Google. If your friend recommends a hotel down the road that’s a little more expensive would you be inclined to go to them or at least their website? The real endgame here is getting members of the public to recommend your hotel, even when they never stayed but their friend did. It’s happening and online can make it happen more.

Searching for “hotels in Cork”, “Hotels in Dublin”, “cheap hotels Dublin” will result in you seeing some very competitive placings. Hotels spend well on search engine optimisation but it’s not just about those pages on your website. Do you have a presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and other sites that rank very highly on Google? A hotel should do their best to own as much of the front page of Google as they can.

Hotel Nove, Marianske Lazne (Marienbad), Czech Republic.
Photo owned by Jim Linwood (cc)

From the mechanics then, to the way the message is relayed. Personality. What way are you communicating with people? Are you fun and friendly? What do you know about the general area and fun things to say? Are you recommending good restaurants and places for tourists to go? Are you encouraging patrons to leave reviews and to blog about you?

Creating a blog about your hotel is good, creating a Twitter profile for your hotel is also good as is a Facebook Fan Page or a LinkedIn Discussion group. People however are not searching or looking to join such a niche community. They want to learn about the half mile to hundreds of miles around it. Why not instead create a blog that while centred around your hotel, also talks about the general area? Become a noticeboard for the community and all their events. Same for Facebook and LinkedIn. You should still however also fully control the usernames for your hotel name too on these sites.

Getting a little in-depth

Blogging:

Create a blog:
Creating a blog will give you a boost in search engine rankings but more importantly it will be a way of showing off your expertise on the area around your hotel. What can you offer above other hotels in such a competitive market? A personal experience which you can show off on the blog and also expertise about the area. Tell people what is interesting, what most other tourists might not get to see. Give case studies how you went above and beyond for a client.

Blog Content:
Have a blog that talks about the Hotel and general area.
Use the blog as a noticeboard about events in the immediate and the surrounding area.
Include photos and videos of recent events at the hotel and the area.
Additionally talk about the hotel on the blog. Give some history. Give stats on the hotel. Number of guests each year, ever. No of miles per year visitors travel to get to hotel. No of sheets washed per year. Weight in tonnes of these sheets. No of rashers consumed each year. If you lined them up end to end how many mies is that?

This will create both engaging content for people who look at the hotel website as well as content that will get people talking and linking

Blog offers:
Be known as a “Blogger friendly” hotel: Offer free wifi in the hotel and give a 5% / 10% discount for “fellow” bloggers. Encourage guests to blog about the hotel and their trip so others can read the opinion of guests. Offer them the chance to guest blog on the site and share their thoughts and get a tourist’s perspective on the area. Add a link to the blog link list (known as a blog roll) to all bloggers who have stayed in the hotel.

See here for a list of Blog Installers if you want to install a blog.

International (Green) Zone, Baghdad, Iraq
Photo owned by jamesdale10 (cc)

Video:

YouTube
YouTube is the second most used search engine nowadays. YouTube videos also show up in Google search results. What videos show up now for your hotel name and the general area?

Create video content using a cheap videocamera like the Flip or the Kodak Zi6 (see some of mine). Interview guests. Interview business people. Talk about the history of the hotel. Tag all videos. This will bring people to your content searching for themselves, their friends, the general area, your hotel. Make sure to add a logo or name to the videos. This is not a sales pitch or a sneaky way of making a hard sell. Make sure the content is useful.

Photos: Flickr

Create an account on Flickr.com, the photo sharing website and upload photos of the area and recent events on a regular basis. Flickr is the most popular online photo sharing site in the world. Encourage guests to become fans of the Flickr profile of the hotel and also encourage them to take photos. Run a monthly competition (for perhaps vouchers) that results in the best local photo being on the front page of the hotel website. Get users to tag their photos of the hotel interior and exterior with the hotel name.

Photos: Pix.ie

An alternate is to use Irish Website Pix.ie to also upload photos.

Facebook:

Create a fan page
Create a fan page for your hotel and import the feed from your blog so new content is being created on the page without any manual work. Also import photos from Flickr and videos from YouTube.

Facebook Events:
Facebook allows you to create events. Create events listings and invite all your contacts to them. Be careful not to send events out too often.

Create a second fan page for your general area
Use this like the section of the blog as a community noticeboard. Use it to inform people of local events and to provide links and information about your local area. Facebook pages show up in Google results.

Twitter:

Create the HotelName account on Twitter to prevent someone else taking it. Also create YourAreaHotels account on Twitter. You can import blog posts into your Twitter account. Do this. Make it clear that the account is that of the hotel. Give out discounts and special offers on the account. Use it once again to share information about the area

Searches on Twitter
Use Twitter to run searches for “hotels in Dublin” “Dublin hotels” or whatever your area is etc. etc. Do not try and spam people about the hotel or broadcast special offers to anyone that mentions these phrases, instead contribute to the conversation. Don’t be a chugger.

Le Meridien San Francisco Room 1112 (5)
Photo owned by garybembridge (cc)

Measuring Effectiveness:

For the blog and website:
Measure number of new links to the website and number of comments on the blog over time.
Measure boost in search engine rankings from this campaign after 1 month, 3 months and 6 months.

Sales measurement:
Have special sales code for Facebook, Twitter and even blog offers. Measure how many availed of this.

Facebook Page:
Measure number of fans of the Facebook page, number of comments left

YouTube:
Measure number of videos watched, numbers of comments left

Twitter:
Measure number of followers, number of replies per day, week, month

D4Hotels – Great local example of Online Interactions

D4Hotels introduced a special offer back in January of hotel rooms with free broadband for just over €20 a night for select rooms at select times. News first hit about this on Boards.ie and spread like wildfire online before getting picked up by the tradtional media. It got huge attention when their marketing person appeared on the Pat Kenny show to talk about the offer and with what sounded like a rookie mistake or nerves or perhaps stupidity, she said all rooms were at that price, which wasn’t true.

D4 Hotels

She got dragged back on air the next day and got roasted by Kenny. Lots and lots of apologies and dozens of complaints. Online however, they not only got the communications right, they upped it with direct interaction with people who booked the offer and people who were considering it. Someone called Pat from D4Hotels came along on Boards.ie and started answering questions. Then switching people to better rooms and following up on stays to see were people happy.

Park Plaza Hotel
Photo owned by cherrylet (cc)(Not actual pic of hotel)

And when the special offer ran out? Well, with the momentum slowing, they introduced a special discount for those using Boards.ie. (Go here and the code is BOARDS) And the momentum kept going again. The discussion thread on the Bargain Alerts forum on Boards.ie got locked yesterday after 23 pages of interactions and 100+ posts from Pat but not before the hotel set up their own blog to keep the interactions going.

Recognition is deserved for Pat and others in D4 Hotels that did this. More of this sort of thing!

Fianna Fuckup – Government party trick bloggers into event

Update: Damien Blake who organised the “getting the bloggers and non-hacks to come along” bit has a blog post on this, apologising for the cockup and taking blame for it. He has also left comments below.

So Fianna Fáil got one of Obama’s web people to come and give a talk to the public about what he did. Or rather, an event billed to be a talk by Joe Rospars was advertised and bloggers were asked to put it on Twitter and their blogs.

It was far from transparent that it was going to be a Fianna Fáil supported event though it was obvious given Fianna Fail were twittering it themselves. It’s fine if they are getting this guy over as a consultant and then getting him to talk to the public, while here. However it seems very much that this was a Fianna Fáil event with a waving monkey for a few seconds and the rest was a party political broadcast. So Fianna Fáil without saying they were Fianna Fáil invited a load of bloggers to this with the (no pun intended) hope of seeing one of the Obamanointed ones but as I write this these bloggers are completely and utterly pissed off. Twitter is alight with their ire and it even seems Fianna Fáil are already trying to placate some journalists:

@unarocks on the phone with FF – they just called to try and control the situation.. too late guys!

Some of the ire here:

LIVID having been ambushed by Fianna Fail, lured with bait of Joe Rospars (Obama campaign director).

and here:

@fionnkidney i feel completely duped. How does FF think this is a good way to engage with bloggers?! TOOLS.

and here:

#rospars event over. People running away. Not a good event at all.

and here:

this event was NOT advertised as FF event. Recruitment was not through FF. But we went to a FF launch plus # Rospars with his FF account

When you start down the route of engaging with an online public, starting off with dishonesty won’t get you far. Events like these are meant to build trust, instead Fianna Fáil will now be even more hated and mistrusted.

More posts on this:

A very good summary from Suzy Byrne.

Online Marketing can mean building something and stepping back

And I don’t mean a god-awful “subsite” for some time-sensitive campaign

I’ve been working with some very different companies and organisations of late and some have identified online communities that they should approach and try and work with. Just buying banner ads is pretty much out as it’s very lossy. What we’ve been trying to do is get these communities to take a look at the products and give genuine feedback on how they should be marketed and even what needs to change in the products. Sometimes though these communities don’t seem to exist or are scattered amongs dozens or hundreds of sites. So I’m trying to get the organisations I’m working with to build a space online for these communities and build them the tools and services to allow them to exchange information and just let them at it. No chugger-marketing (get in your way and face), no spamming you with email updates you can’t opt out of, nothing like that.

An analogy would be a skater shop building a skate park for their community, if that community doesn’t have one already. The old-skool business types would of course plaster such a place with ads, loudhailers talking about the latest offers and demand the kids only wear and use the products they stock. Restricting the freedom of your customers isn’t going to work these days. I remember I saw a show before about some athlete and some kid asked him for an autograph and he told the kid he was contractually obliged to not sign anything with a logo of his sponsor’s competitor. All the kid had was a flyer he got at the event. I’m sure his sponsor was delighted seeing that because they probably thought the kid will know better next time and buy some logofied item to get a signature. Or maybe the kid will find another hero. They’re spare these days since the net can connect us with them all.

skate
Photo owned by Aitor Escauriaza (cc)

If the skater park does exist however, just go along and participate as someone who has something to say. Give advice freely, make recommendations but disclose your bias. Go there to help people out and maybe ask for some help back. Be a skater, be a coach.

In the Forrester book Groundswell they gave the example of a group that built a private social network for cancer patients to recount their experiences and exchange information with each other. From talking to these people they saw exactly how patients chose their specialists and what criteria they used. People didn’t actually spend too much timing choosing who they should go to, they left that to their doctors so the cancer specialist centres then started working with Doctors to let them know of their services.

Of course something like a social network is expensive and Ning isn’t that great so you could just build a blog and use it like a community noticeboard, a central source for everything in your business segment. Mention everything that’s going on. Mention your competitors and talk them up. If you build a space online where the people who you want to market to are coming to every single day, have it in their bookmarks and their news feeds then you don’t really need to do the traditional form of in your face advertising or marketing. Brand recognition and trust is there.

Last weekend I spoke to some county and city councillors about whether they should do the whole online thing and do a blog and join social networks. I think for the vast majority they should have a blog and should use it to talk about local issues and explain their reasonings and take on things. However with the local elections pretty much just around the corner, perhaps setting up one now might be seen as a cynical exercise. Two years ago might have been a better time as it will take a while to get momentum going with these things. A blog isn’t a campaigning tool as such and making it one will probably end in failure, it’s a longterm communications tool for the day to day and week to week issues the public and a politician might encounter.

spoa090197
Photo owned by bob brussack (cc)

So going back to the skating analogy, build your store next to the skate park and be there dispensing genuine advice at the skate park. Yes, it’s going to be a bigger effort and a lot more work but it’s a longterm commitment that in a way ensures a longterm survival.

Collision Course II – Final Details – Sharing is caring

The second Collision Course is going to be on on Wednesday February 18th, again in the Edelman Offices on Stephen’s Green. We’ll start at 6.11pm and go on for an hour and half. 30 people have stuck their name down so far for this so we’re fairly full. But add your name too as there’ll be cancelations no doubt.

At this Collision Course we’re going to get the PR and Digital Marketing people to mix more with the bloggers who are attending and to share their experiences during the time we have. On the night we’ll split into three groups, each group will hopefully have the same ratio of PR/Marketing people to bloggers and each group will be given a campaign to work on. Each group will then present their ideas on what they’d do. The purpose is to cross-train/cross-share their opinions and insights and in doing so, get to know each other even more.

Last time we all went our own ways afterwards so maybe we should stick around for a while and get to know each other a bit more or head to a bar. Last time some of us went to O’Donoghues. Perhaps we can do the same again?

Police car crash
Photo owned by big-ashb (cc)

The next Collision Course is March 11th, again in Dublin. We’d like to try out another venue but to suit everyone, it needs to be in the City Centre. Offers are appreciated. The venue needs to be quiet so we can marvel at the sound of our own voice and needs to hold 30-40 people.

Knowledge is Power – February 5th 2009

Dell are doing twitter specific discount codes.

EConsultancy wrote up the minutes of the Jan 09 MeasurementCamp. Here they are. (PDF)

Kerry has a list of Twitter tools and toys.

Pew’s latest online survey of adults with a good lock at social networking.

Vans release an iPhone game. Brilliant. Hit up skaters when they’re being skaters during non-skaters time. Get what we mean? 🙂

Channel 4’s iPhone app is damned clever too.

Three ways to better listening.

Gorillas and eyebrows = sales jumps. Gaming people is that easy?

While the ads for Cadburys are not near the genius of the Burger King marketing campaigns they do seem highly effective. The Gorilla ad spawned dozens of spoofs and people are still talking about it:

This is the Bonnie Tyler version (The original was removed from YouTube)

And now we have the eyebrows ad and everyone is going wild for it. Fantastic:

Is that it?

Some thoughts:

If this was an ad for Taytos would it have worked?
Would it have worked as well if the Gorilla ad didn’t exist?
If this ad came first, then the Gorilla ad, again would it have worked as well?
Is this a proof that if you have enough spend, a simple ad saturated in mainstream advertising but also being spread virally (this means the people spread it and mutate it and you can’t control it, not the “we’re a viral marketing company” horseshit you see) still has massive reach.
How much of the success of this is down to the creative and down to the coverage spend?
With some media groups on their knees maybe going back to less social type engagement can now give a good return on the investment going in, even if it’s not very measureable. TV, radio and print is now more competitive with online for once.
How many other companies are going to try and do the same in the next 12 months?

Collision Course 1 – Aftermath

Well actually, in case it wasn’t clear, bloggers are not whores for free stuff.

Whore in Boca
Photo owned by tercerojista (cc)

Other coverage of the first event: Rick, Alexia, Peter, Will, Thomas, Eoin, Alastair.

I’d disagree that throwing free stuff at bloggers or inviting them to events is good for either demographic. That kind of stuff is superficial and lacks any kind of thought. Bloggers are more than Gavin Lambe-Botoxes. And I’d strongly disagree with Thomas that bloggers think they’re journalists either. That is easily proved wrong with the slightest interaction with bloggers. Journalism is way more than writing about free stuff you were given and maybe it should never have done so.

For me, the real value in working with bloggers is giving unbiased information to opinion formers, those who reach beyond their blog readership and are respected by other blogs and their peers in the offline world. Those who write and analyze because they want to, not because they got the offer of something. If you have a shit hot product then giving the gorey details to a blogger who considers their blog as a space that covers these products is good enough, they’ll be clever enough to come to the right conclusion about it. Answer all the questions they have about it. If you have a shit product though then don’t give it to a blogger, unless it’s one of the claphappy ones out there that take money to do reviews anyway. No I won’t supply a list. They might be good for search engines but they’re not respected.

Saying that, the web and the Internet might be the future but this is the present and bloggers have some influence but not a lot. PR people need to figure out the value in bringing bloggers to events and boozing them up and whatnot. Perhaps a simple email with a few attached documents might be more than enough. Many bloggers might appreciate access to someone in a company or an information source rather than samples of a product. This billable hours thing that was mentioned a lot at Collision Course suggests PR companies have limited resources and some clients might not want to pay big amounts. If that’s the case, maybe one’s time is better spent trying to get discussion of your client or their company on to Pat Kenny or mentioned in the Sunday Business Post but then again, this is pretty much the same as bringing bloggers to events. Short term.

You know, the R in PR? Working on that might be better. Proper relationship building takes much longer than that though and billable hours will probably hamper that. Perhaps that’s why the clever PR firms hand over the relationship to internal employees of their client company once the blogger or journalist is first introduced via the PR company? Good matchmakers are good PR people. The King sending gifts to his potential Queen does nothing if she has more than a few braincells. Which goes back to the first line in this post.

There is nothing new in this globally but locally it seems bloggers and PR people are learning these basics. If you’re not clever on how you work with bloggers and how bloggers work with PR companies then you will see blog posts like this famous and very true blog post from Tom Coates about his disgust with PR and Marketing types. That happened 18 months ago in the UK. Hopefully the idea of Collision Course and ongoing feedback will stop this. Perhaps next time those that aired their feelings in the pub afterwards might actually do so at the event where the PR people were.

For the next Collision Course I’d hope we can move beyond seeing how best to make contact with bloggers and ask the PR people the best way bloggers can contact their clients or get information from their clients via PR companies. It’s two-way, not one way. In addition I’d hope to get bloggers and PR people to bring along what they consider good examples of Online PR and Marketing.