frankly speaking

Pick Your Poison - Where To Send Offline Traffic

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, and to be honest, don’t have a firm grasp on the solution. Having said that, there’s an interesting problem facing marketers these days. The problem boils down to where do you send your potential customers that you are advertising to via television and radio - do you send them to your facebook page or do you send them to your website? 

I’m sure you’ve noticed that a lot more brand advertisers are sending traffic to their facebook pages lately. For example, in a lot of commercials you’ll see brands list www.facebook.com/xxxxx as the address they want consumers to visit. Likewise, I’ve even seen some advertisers have a graphic on their commercials that simply says ‘Follow us on twitter @xxxxx’.  I find this fascinating.

One of the jobs of a marketer is to reduce the ‘clicks to conversions’ metric, that is, you’re supposed to cut down on the number of clicks that it takes a consumer to convert. This makes the case for sending a consumer directly to your website most logical. By intervening and giving the consumer an additional step before getting them to your website, increases the probability that your potential consumer will become distracted and not converting on your website. 

On the other hand, there is tremendous value in adding a new Facebook fan (to find that exact value, do the analytics internally :). Each of your fans will see your updates, links, coupons on deals and has the ability to spread that information with his or her own network. The virality of facebook is part of what makes the platform so unique and a very important strategy for all marketers. 

At the end of the day, brands have to decide for themselves what is most value. I would imagine conversion rates from traffic sent directly to their website is higher, but lifetime value of fans sent to a brands facebook page is much greater. 

Thoughts? 

Tags: Advertising Branding

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Date: 04.19.11 Time: 12:46 PM
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Moving to Mobile

I’ve come to understand a rather interesting fact over the last couple weeks: the world is moving very quickly into the mobile space. This is clearly evident with the increase in number smartphones and tablet computers (which operate mainly on a mobile operating system) being sold. We’re going to be a mobile world, one that is constantly connected to the World Wide Web. 

Think about it, there are 4.6 Billion mobile phones in the world (and this doesn’t take into account the number of tablets), all making us interconnected to each other. A mobile phone number (in my opinion) is more personal than an email address. Similarly, if an advertiser knows what kind of phone and/or what kind of mobile operating system their customers and potential customers use, they could deliver a more targeted message and user experience to the user.

The problem that most advertisers will have is to optimize their messaging for mobile platforms. Mobile phones aren’t as dynamic as computers, and you’re limited to what types of ads you can serve on a mobile phone. Likewise, the user experience on a mobile platform is completely different from that of using a computer and may be completely different from one mobile platform to another.

Having said that, the opportunity for advertisers via mobile platforms is enormous. Companies like Foursquare, Gilt Groupe and even more traditional e-retailers like Overstock.com (with their purchase of the domain o.co) are betting large sums of money on the success of the mobile platform.

The bottom line is that advertisers need to realize that traditional online marketing is not enough anymore - a key ingredient in any marketing plan will be your mobile strategy. 

Tags: Mobile Advertising

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Date: 03.16.11 Time: 18:39 PM
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