Here’s a study from Shes Connected that relates to online newspapers and local advertising. They asked women how comfortable they would be with different ways for social networking sites to make money. Not unlike the revenue model question newspapers are asking their readers for online newspapers.
Display advertising is the big winner with 62% very comfortable with that approach and the subscription model the big loser with 49% saying they wouldn’t pay to go to the site.
It’s the same story for newspapers, where not surprisingly people like to read online newspapers for free and don’t mind the idea of running ads on the site. Maybe there is good news here for advertisers in that consumers understand the concept and don’t have negative feelings about online ads, much like they’ve accepted print ads in newspapers.
Advertising on social networks is sure to happen and because they don’t have to keep paying for the “old model” like newspapers have to keep paying off their printing presses, things should work out very well for social media sites.
So, get ready to build the tools for your dealers to advertise locally on sites like Twitter and Facebook. It will be very cost-effective.
According to a recent Harris Interactive study reported by eMarketer, consumers attitudes about mobile coupons are still tepid, even though the projections are for rapid growth in the next few years.
I think that consumers interested in shopping go online before they get in the car and head for a store. So, it makes more sense to print out a coupon from an online site or clip a newspaper ad from home.
In fact, 86% of those surveyed had clipped paper coupons and 65% had printed out online coupons while only 4% used mobile coupons.
The challenge with most of these studies is to relate the answers to what we are actually selling. Maybe mobile coupons for fast food restaurants will make sense but a mobile coupon for a riding lawn mower doesn’t, yet.
The good news is that according to this survey consumers are looking at print and online for coupons and it drives them into local retailers.
In this blog we talk a lot about localization. Technology allows us to know where a consumer is geographically when they’re reading an online ad and, much like your local newspaper, we can feed an ad loaded with information about a local dealer for a specific brand. Not much of a shock to anyone’s system.
Beyond localization is customizing the online ad based on your surfing history. Showing ads based on information from tracking where you’ve been on the site you’re on or even other sites you’ve been too. That’s behavioral marketing and can make people a little nervous.
So, before the FTC rushes in and regulates the industry the advertising industry has come up with a first step to inform consumers why they are seeing a specific ad. Here’s a mock-up taken from an article in The New York Times.
The idea is that you’ll click on the “i” icon and go to a page that explains why you are seeing this ad, assure you that they really don’t know much about you and allow you to fine tune or opt-out of the program.
No one thinks this is the only step that needs to be taken but it is a first step. And, I haven’t read about anyone predicting how consumers will react to this message.
A few weeks ago we reported on Google’s version of the same idea on their search site and that most consumers were indifferent or even modified the settings to improve the customization of the ads. However, just because it works on a search site and one that is as well known as Google doesn’t mean it will work everywhere on the internet.
This will be interesting to watch.
Anyone concerned about advertising on a local level is interested in the survival of newspapers. Will the print edition go away? Will they go completely online? How do we best reach local consumers?
If you have a Kindle or you’re going to buy the iPad, you’ve noticed that they offer subscriptions to newspapers, delivered right to your device. For example, The Boston Globe is available for only $9.99 a month. Are e-readers the way for newspapers to charge for content while saving on printing and distribution costs? Is this the way for newspapers to survive?
Here’s the problem, e-readers all have wireless connections to the internet, they have browsers built-in (Kindle has lousy browser while iPad from I’ve heard has a great browser) where the information for The Boston Globe is only a click away and it’s free. So, why would I pay for a subscription?
As long as e-readers have internet connections, I don’t see how they are any different than trying to sell me an online subscription to my local newspaper. And so far, that idea isn’t working to well as this post from Slashdot about a newspaper on Long Island confirms. After three months they only sold 35, $5 per month subscriptions.
Ok, that’s not going to work.
One of the biggest changes in the World Wide Web that I’ve seen since 1995 is that it has become so much more local. As it gets more local, from an advertising point of view, it starts to act more like a local newspaper in that we know where the reader is. (Who knew back then that a newspaper was geocoded?)
Another indication of the localization of the web is what Twitter started to roll out yesterday.
Now, Twitter asks you to set your location (only a limited number of big cities to choose from today) and then you can watch subject categories from your city.
Imagine having a local promotion that you Tweet about and get listed high on Twitter/Chicago.
The internet is giving us a wide range of options for reaching specific markets, many more than we had in 95 and with all this change comes confusion for local retailers. To me it’s the job of the brand managers to sort through all of the options available to local dealers today, pick the winners and then give the dealer the tools to take advantage of these cost-effective alternatives to traditional advertising methods.
And, just when you think you have it all figured out, another opportunity presents itself.
As the Internet matures brand managers are starting to understand the need to connect consumers from their brand site to their local dealer to complete the sale. And, most often the first step should be to the dealer’s site, since the consumer is already online.
Unfortunately, most dealer locators link the consumer to the dealer’s own site which is often out of date, certainly not brand compliant and, way too often, loaded with competitive information. Or, the dealer locator results aren’t much more than a white page listing giving address and phone number, not a very helpful next step to a sale.
Dealer microsites solve the problem by providing a site for every dealer that combines product information with local information and looks like the brand site.
This solves the problem for your dealer locator as you can let a consumer learn more about your local dealer and even see any local promotions.
It solves another problem too, that is, the dealers hate to link to a brand site because it has a dealer locator that shows nearby competitors and often times shows products and product categories the dealer doesn’t carry. With a dealer microsite the dealer now has a place to link the consumer knowing that he is protected.
A good dealer microsite program is a win for the brand, for the dealer and the consumer. These sites make for great Google landing pages, too.
Here’s a new report from Harris Interactive that tells us where consumers look for ads when they’re bargain hunting.
Overall, newspapers and magazine advertisements are the favorites with online advertisements coming in second.
When you look at age preference from 18 to 44 then online wins the contest with newspapers and magazine advertisements coming in second. The study also shows online advertisements are more popular with college graduates over newspapers and magazines.
The real takeaway from this report is that you can’t keep online out of your media plans anymore and you have to help your independent dealers get into the game.
Many brand managers get it and we’re seeing more and more demand for things like local Google Adwords or banner ads builders in RFPs for ad builders.
And, that’s good for customers and dealers.
A recent article in The New York Times explains how they are going to begin charging for consumers to have access to their online edition in 2011.
They didn’t give pricing or delve into many specifics but they at least gave us their strategy and it sounds like a good idea and, if successful, I’m sure many other cash starved newspapers will follow their lead.
The basic plan is that you will be allowed X number of articles you can read per month for free and after you hit that number you’ll be asked to pay a fee for unlimited access. That’s a good idea for several reasons. One is that it should keep their online readership numbers up and online advertisers happy. Then, over time they’ll lower and lower that number of free articles to slowly charge us more and more. No big shock to consumers or advertisers as they control the pain.
This is a much better than their previous attempt where they charged for columns written by their best editorial writers. All that did was keep us from reading their best articles.
The basic takeaway is that newspapers have hit bottom and are going to finally figure out ways to succeed economically and therefore remain an important part of local advertising for those of us concerned about retail advertising. And, we have to provide dealers with tools that will help them advertise in both the print and online editions of newspapers for many years to come. Maybe the worst is almost over for the newspaper industry. Thank goodness.
You love getting emails like this from your clients. This is one I received last month after our team implemented a new Google AdWords campaign the month prior. Our client is the leader in geothermal heating/cooling systems and they are very smart about how they generate sales leads for their dealers and territory managers. The consumer benefits are great (money saving and eco-friendly) and since each system can generate thousands in sales, each lead is precious.
After a multi-vendor competition pilot with several dealers last summer, our approach was deemed the best (lowest bounce rate for the landing page, most efficient coverage, etc).
A sample of one of the landing pages we use is below. These pages also generate leads from the manufacturers’ dealer locator too.
As an Authorized Google AdWord reseller, we’re expanding the program this year and looking forward to more great emails like that in 2010.
Marketing Sherpa recently released a survey about why consumers friend or follow companies on social sites.
The good news is that the most popular reason is the same as it is for why they go to Google. Consumers are looking for your products, price, promotion and service. And, most often service means a local retailer.
Recently we’ve seen several RFPs for our Ad Builder that go beyond allowing retailers to build newspaper ads and other traditional media to requesting functionality for building digital outputs.
Banner ad landing pages, Google landing pages and more are very popular and it may not be long before you’ll also want your retailers to be able to build fan pages that you can link consumers too.
The technology is changing but the consumers want the same old things. They want to know about your product, its price, are there any promotions and where can they buy it and who will service it.
That they are looking for those things online is a good thing because it’s actually much easier to deliver this information online than via traditional media.
