Back in 2008, we reported on the atonishing revenue Google was generating per employee: $210,000 per year! It appears that revenue has turned into a nice little stockpile of cash for the search giant. If you were to divide up all the cash Google has in its coffers, each employee would walk away with $1.4 million!
Tags: cash, each-employee, its-coffers, nice-little, Research, Search, tech-copanies, the-atonishing, the-search
Posted July 29, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media
A new survey by Cone says that four-out-of-five consumers will go online for a recommendation when they’re interested in buying something–even after it’s been recommended to them by a friend or family member. Looks like blood isn’t thicker than water these days. Not when it comes to parting with hard earned cash. And it doesn’t have to be a lot of cash, either. The survey found that cost wasn’t a big factor in the decision to verify product claims. 82% said they would do research online before buying a car, but 72% said they’d check the reviews on movies and restaurants before heading out. Once they find what they’re looking for online, 80% of those polled said that a positive recommendation would reinforce their intent to buy. It’s interesting to note that only 68% said a negative review would stop them from buying a product or service. That may be the result of our tendency to want validation for our own ideas. Dad likes it, the guy online likes it and so do you, equals, you’re a smart decision maker. The oddest thing about the study is the portion that talks about who you trust. 63% said they trust recommendations from family members, 31% said friends and only 2% said strangers. Yet a huge portion of the 98% who said they didn’t trust strangers admit to going online to look for confirmation of recommendations by family members . So you won’t trust a stranger on the street but you’ll trust one who writes a review at Amazon. Interesting. If you believe what the Cone study is saying, then a lot marketing agencies are going about this all wrong. Bzzagent , for example, is a program that is built on the concept that word-of-mouth marketing between friends and family members is the best marketing. Bzzagents are given samples of a product along with talking points and coupons designed to spread the buzz. Going with what the Cone study says, there needs to be an additional step, which is pointing the buzz-ee to a website where they can read positive reviews to back up the bzzagent’s claims. A combined one-two punch, word of mouth followed by online reviews, is a near perfect winner, particularly if you’re going after the 25-34 crowd. According to the study, 91% of those people go online to verify recommendations and 90% said they were likely to buy after finding support for the claims online. If want to know more about this survey, the best place to visit is Cone Inc but since I know you’re not going to take my word for it, you can check with Glenn Zaccara, Sr. Manager, Corporate Social Responsibility, T-Mobile USA, he says, “The agency continues to be the rock behind the program we’ve built.” Good enough for you?
Tags: Buzz, Cone, flickr, glenn-zaccara, Research, rock, shopping, spread-the-buzz, street, study, survey, USA
Posted July 28, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media
I’m at the bank depositing money. That’s a real tweet I saw this week and it was followed by a Foursquare link showing the exact bank. According to new research by Forrester, that tweeter was probably a young adult male with a college degree and he’s one of only 1% of online users who actually do this kind of thing. From my experience, it seems that half the people I follow on Twitter use location-based tweets, but the data says that only 4% of online adults have even tried geolocation and only 1% uses it on regular basis. Really? The study also says that 70% of the users are between 19 and 35 and 80% are male. Again, not my experience, so apparently I have unusual friends. The good news for marketers is that though the group is small, they’re powerful. Melissa Parish of Forrester wrote on her blog: “Our research shows that these users are typically young, male, well-educated, and influential. In fact, LBSN users are users are 38% more likely than the average US online adult to say that friends and family ask their opinions before making a purchase decision.” So the question becomes, how much of your time and money should be spent marketing to this group? Parrish says very little. “Though many LBSNs are gathering steam, the landscape is fragmented and the programs can’t scale just yet. But with large companies preparing to enter the market (I’m looking at you Facebook and Yahoo!) the time for marketers to get involved is coming.” That is unless you’re marketing a product of interest to college-educated male trendsetters under 35. In that case, it’s time to start working on that Foursquare Mayor of Marketingville badge.
Tags: data, experience, facebook, Forrester, group, half-the-people, landscape, Local/Mobile, marketingville, Melissa Parish, people, Research, time, Yahoo
Posted July 27, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media
Advertising suffers from a reputation problem. Here at Marketing Pilgrim we are very interested in online reputation management but even the best social media monitoring tools can’t help some industries. Of course, when you spend years simply ignoring how poorly you are viewed by the public in general, it doesn’t help. This is how the advertising industry has put together its stellar reputation that it is now trying to control a bit with the help of the oldest journalism school in the country, The University of Missouri School of Journalism. The Huffington Report says Industry leaders are teaming up with the nation’s oldest journalism school to launch the Institute for Advertising Ethics. Among the research center’s goals is to improve the public image of a business that spent $125 billion last year but isn’t exactly known for its bedrock principles and unwavering scruples. Whether it’s the duplicitous exploits of fictional television character Don Draper or the latest penalties levied by the Federal Trade Commission, the ad industry struggles to put its best face forward. A 2007 Gallup survey ranked advertisers among the least trustworthy professionals – barely beating out lobbyists and car salesmen. It’s funny in some ways but actually quite pathetic in many others that the advertising industry has sunk to this level. I would be interested to see that survey conducted today to see if there has been any movement either up or down. I suspect it’s either about the same or even worse but that’s just a guess. So why this desire to self-police? “Because it is persuasion, advertising is viewed in a questionable way by a lot of people,” said Margaret Duffy, a former ad executive who now teaches at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and is helping to organize the ethics institute. But even though the industry’s fundamental purpose is to convince shoppers to buy a product they may not actually need, such persuasion can be done in an “ethical and tasteful” way, she added. Honestly, if this is the attitude of one of the founders of the institute I can only imagine what’s going to come out of it as it develops. Maybe there will be a guide called “How to Make People Buy Things They Don’t Want but Still Feel Good About Your Profession” or how about “Top Ten Ways to Screw Someone Without Them Feeling It”. Sorry I seem a bit negative on this one but when an industry built on spin starts to spin ethics then it’s hard to figure out what is spin and what is, well, something else. This group though is convinced that there is good to be done. The leader of the institute is visiting professor, Wally Snyder, who is a former FTC (Federal Trade Commission) lawyer and American Advertising Federation president. He realizes that he has a tough road ahead with such reputation luminaries as lawyers and members of Congress having higher trust scores than advertisers according to Gallup. That’s pretty impressive, huh?! But if the industry is thinking any way like this following agency owner then all we can say is “Best of luck, Wally!” Mark Fleisher, owner of a small advertising agency in central Pennsylvania near Harrisburg, says the industry doesn’t need to be reminded of the importance of ethical behavior. It just needs to increase the honesty quotient. “The industry has become more ethical because the clients have become smarter,” he said. “Agencies are still going to pull whatever they need to (clinch a deal). And those agencies will run roughshod over the honest ones. That’s been going on for years.” Increase the honesty quotient? Industry has become more ethical because clients have become smarter? I’m not even sure how to respond to those kinds of assessments. Let’s put it this way, if the institute is generating revenue there looks to be plenty of job security in the future. Of course, there will be the ‘big boys’ running the show with board members from Procter & Gamble, Omnicom Group, WPP and Ketchum but as Jim Edwards, a former Adweek managing editor puts it “History does not suggest that these things catch on very well,” he said. “There’s a structural problem in the advertising business. The entire industry is engaged in a race to the bottom. Whoever can do it the cheapest and the fastest wins.” I realize I have taken the cynical approach to this kind of endeavor. What are your thoughts? Is it possible to self-police the ad industry like this group and the Interactive Advertising Bureau are suggesting? Let’s hear your take.
Tags: advertising, clients, congress, country, ethics, federal-trade, institute, marketing, missouri-school, people, Research, simply-ignoring, Social Media, thoughts, university
Posted July 27, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media
We like to think of colleges and universities as places where learning trumps all else, but the truth of the matter is that institutions like these are still businesses, which means they need to make money. Says Rob Moore of Lipman Hearne, a marketing company specializing in non-profits: “Higher ed institutions today are facing a conflation of challenges that can best be met through more effective marketing. Increased competition for students, deep tuition discounting, demographic pressures that put many traditional markets at risk—all have a huge impact on the institution’s bottom line.” In response to this, colleges and universities are actively adding new marketing tactics to the mix including social media and interactive marketing. Lipman Hearne recently published the results of a study called “Marketing Spending at Colleges and Universities” and here’s what they found: Interactive and social media budgets are growing. Between FY2008 and FY2009, 55 percent of institutions surveyed allocated more to interactive; and 52 percent allocated more to social media . Institutions that invested more in social media were more likely to report positive outcomes in three important areas: website hits, positioning, and rates of alumni giving. Moderate-to-heavy users of social media were actually spending less per student overall on marketing activities. The moderate-to-heavy investors spent $83 per student, and the light-to-non-investors spent $121 per student. While interactive and social media budgets were on the rise, traditional advertising budgets were on the wane. The study found that more than one-third of the institutions allocated less to traditional advertising in FY2009 than they did in FY2008 (35 percent). And 42 percent of moderate-to-heavy social media users spent less on traditional advertising compared to the prior year. Institutions continue to rely on print publications. Of those surveyed, 55 percent spent the same portion of their budget on print publications in FY2009 as they did in FY2008. In fact, more than one-quarter of marketing budgets went toward print publications, more than any other category. Though marketing spending has decreased at some institutions in the short term, marketing spending has increased substantially over the last decade. According to an earlier study, in FY2001, the median marketing spending for a midsized college or university (2,000-5,999 students) was $259,400 (or $321,900, adjusted for inflation). Not even a decade later, that figure rises to $800,000—an increase of more than 100 percent. One of the most telling points here is the marketing dollar to student ratio. This number indicates that social media marketing is cheaper but just as effective as traditional marketing. Or so it would seem. The trouble with marketing and education is how you define the results. Unlike a retail business where you can see the effect in dollars earned, colleges have to look at a variety of results from number of students enrolling to donations, even the popularity of a faculty member could be seen as an uptick. Donna Van De Water, director of research at Lipman Hearne, and one of the study’s authors says: “In the last five years there’s been a much greater interest in proof, in validation, and in testing. Marketers need to be able to show that their investments are going to have a payoff, whether it’s in increasing enrollments or generating a higher profile. Having the metrics helps an institution understand where it sits relative to competitors, how to better manage reputation, how to shape messages, and how to maximize resources.” For more information about the report’s findings, please visit www.lipmanhearne.com .
Tags: colleges, flickr, institutions, light, lipman hearne, marketing, metrics, Research, results, Social Media, study, universities, water
Posted July 26, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media