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What Are Marketers Evaluating To Determine Where External Budget Dollars Go?

posted on October 10, 2012

Marketers have a lot on their plate. Now imagine if that plate were their budget and the marketing world just kept piling on new things until the plate, which has a finite capacity, overflowed. No matter how good the stuff on that plate looked marketers can only eat put so much on that plate / budget.

With that said, marketers must constantly evaluate how they will allocate the limited space in their budget for the myriad options available in the online and offline marketing worlds. A report from the folks who put on the eTail conferences each year gives insights into what their attendees were interested in spending externally just this past August. Remember this is external spend with vendors and additional avenues of help. Here is a summary chart.

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TV In The Age Of The Tablet Not So Different After All

posted on October 10, 2012

I was speaking to a group recently where a relatively young marketer posited to everyone with great confidence that “No one watches TV anymore. Everyone watches it online.” Trying to be kind and gentle I said that that was dangerous thinking because that came from his perspective and his observation of his peer group. Why should he assume that what he does is what everyone else does?

As marketers we can’t assume that our personal actions are what everyone does as well. We will miss opportunity with that kind of mindset.

So what’s the point you ask? It’s about TV viewing in the age of the tablet. If the following chart has any truth do it, it appears as if the TV viewing habits of most haven’t moved as much to the online space as we might think based on the hype and the opinions of many who are taking the bait hook, line, and sinker.

So is it right then to say that TV viewing isn’t going to change in the future?

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Survey Says a Large Portion of Online Shopping is Done After Dark

posted on October 9, 2012

When I get up in the morning, my inbox is filled with marketing messages from the brands I follow. I delete most of them without reading them. Why? Not because I’m not interested, but because I can’t deal with this deluge personal information at the start of my work day. If only these brands would send the emails in the evening when I’m sitting on the couch browsing with my iPad. . . (hint, hint.)

According to a new study from Yesmail, 60% of consumers say they’d rather interact with brands on social media between 6 pm and 2 am. 40% say they do their online shopping after 6 pm.

Conversely, only 5% of email campaigns are set to hit between 6 and 10 pm and the majority of Facebook campaigns launch during the day.

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Restaurant.com Requires Diners to Actually Eat Before Reviewing

posted on October 9, 2012

A recent study by Gartner concluded that by 2014, 10 to 15% of all online reviews would be fake. That’s a crime, because a large portion of consumers use online reviews to help them make decisions about where to shop, who to hire and where to eat.

Restaurant.com is taking care of that last part with their Verified Review program. Before anyone can leave a review on the site, they have to purchase and redeem a restaurant voucher. Once their redemption has been verified, they get a link inviting them to leave a review.

To assure the best possible quality, reviewers must also complete a short survey and assign star ratings. They’re also required to comment only on the restaurant experience; the food, the service, the ambiance. They may not use the review to talk abut a bad experience with the deal or their own personal disaster. (My boyfriend broke up with me at dinner! I hate this restaurant.)

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Twitter Discovers That Details Matter In a Social World

posted on October 9, 2012

Twitter has hired a new VP of Design in Mike Davidson.

Pretty standard stuff, right? Well, there is an interesting thread to this because Davidson announced his move to Twitter on Twitter in what I suspect he figured was a cool way (it was tweet number 10,000 for him which is either cool or too much information depending on your point of view, I suppose). Nice touch, huh?

Trouble is he used the third party Twitter app Echofon to do it which is not exactly the direction Twitter is heading these days.

Minor point? Over reaction? Sure, you can say that but what it did was open a door for discussion that didn’t need to be opened. Instead of having a great move by Twitter you get a post like this one or this kind of sentiment from Mashable

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Would You Like a Facebook ‘Want’ Button?

posted on October 9, 2012

Facebook and likes are synonymous these days. So much so that Facebook has practically succeeded in watering down the meaning of the word ‘like’ along with ‘friend’ and others.

Now the company is experimenting with the ability for users to create a wishlist of sorts by identifying things they desire with a ‘want’ button. Reuters reports

Facebook Inc is testing a feature that lets users of the social network create “wishlists” of home furnishings, clothing and other retail products, laying the groundwork for what some believe could be an eventual push into e-commerce.

Facebook said it is working with seven retailers, including Pottery Barn and Victoria’s Secret, to test the new feature that will allow certain users to flag images of desired products by clicking a special “want” button.

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Internet Heavy Hitters Band Together to Build an Authoritative Source for Web Developers

posted on October 8, 2012

Imagine if Adobe, Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, and Opera, all got together and wrote a book about web development. That would be some massive tome. It would cover everything from HTML to Java, CSS to mobile, social, sharing and SVG.

Wait! You’d don’t have to imagine it — it’s real! All those companies are working together on a project called Web Platform Docs. It’s a community-driven wiki that aims to document everything designers and developers need to know about the Open Web Platform.

Without the geek speak, Web Platform Docs is an in-progress collection of instructions on how to build pages for the web and for mobile. Why it’s important, is because right now, every browser and major web entity has its own nuances. Meaning a page that looks gorgeous viewed with Internet Explorer, might look wonky on Firefox.