For online marketers, a key challenge is trying to understand how customers arrive at the point of conversion. Did a display ad eventually lead to a search? Was it chatter on a social media site that initially engaged the customer’s interest? Was it a combination of channels over time? These questions are not always easy or even possible to answer, but acknowledging that campaign channels do not exist in isolation is an important first step. A recent report by Eyeblaster Research argues that measuring the return on search campaigns and display ads needs to be approached holistically: “While search harvests prospective customers that are already in the purchase funnel, it reaches a limited number of people. Display increases reach by soliciting as many customers as possible and moving them into the funnel."

A holistic view of search and display, as well as other channels, would require that the analytical tools used for measuring ROI move beyond the traditional focus on immediate clicks and into the realm of brand awareness. For example, in terms of awareness, targeted display ads could have a considerable advantage over search channels, not only because images stimulate a different type of association and memory, but also because users do not search for display ads; they stumble upon them. Contrast that with search, which typically involves users with preconceived notions of what they want, from the very specific such as brand names to the more general such as types of products and services. Teaming the two, we can see how there would be opportunities to catch previously unintentional customers alongside the intentional through search.

This does not mean that display ads are better than search or other channels when it comes to conversions (that depends on many factors, including your budget allocation and your customers). It simply means that awareness could lead to searching, even if the search occurs weeks or months later. In a 2009 report by the Atlas Institute, “The Long Road to Conversion: The Digital Purchase Funnel”, the authors argued convincingly that “the advertising metrics and models developed for online marketers largely ignore the question of when media exposure occurs.” Sometimes, it takes time.

So, are there any reliable ways to measure a converter’s interaction with your cross-channel ad efforts over a longer period of time? We’re getting there. The field of vendors is still pretty slim, but Emily Riley of Forrester Research has identified some that are clearly leading the pack: ClearSaleing, Visual IQ, and Atlas, to name a few. As the push to understand online customers from start to finish moves forward, we can expect more sophisticated analytical tools, a shift away from click-driven metrics, and of course, more discussion about online privacy.

Last week, Google’s newest venture, Google Buzz, went live for just about all Gmail users. This lovechild of FriendFeed, Twitter, and AIM gives users the ability to start an open chat with any email contact, and include photos, and links. It also incorporates your GChat status updates and away messages as “buzzes,” and posts all of the above to your very public Google profile.
 
Immediately, the masses began critiquing this new tool, particularly since its release lied so close on the heels of Google Wave, the last misunderstood, under-utilized venture from the search giant.  After all, isn’t Buzz just expanded GChat? And who wants all of this information on their public profiles? And why wouldn’t you just email the person instead? And honestly, there are some people you just want to email and not chat with. All very valid points. But is all the Google Buzz criticism really about technical capabilities and privacy, or is it more about social backlash?
 
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, UStream, Google, LinkedIn… throughout the day there are endless possibilities for one of your friends to interrupt all of your strategizing mojo with a video clip of cats playing poker. And that Aunt whose calls you’ve been avoiding? If you’ve ever sent her an email in your life, she can now find you and buzz you. Comments you make on Twitter, even in the deluded privacy of a reply, show up as a search result. And even if you try to keep a low profile, Google will shout your email address from the rooftops so that anyone with even brief search skills can find a way to contact you.
 
And whether or not you’re sharing information, everyone in your circle is sharing it to you -- or actually, “at” you. Why?
 
Recently, the New York Times published an article debating the reasons why we feel the need to share so much information on the web.  Author John Tierney tells us that people enjoy sharing “awe” inducing stories for two basic reasons:  ” I give you something of practical value in the hope that you’ll someday return the favor.” And “I get to show off how well informed I am by sending news that will shock you.” But above this reasoning, Dr. Jonah Berger of Penn’s Wharton School tells Tuerney that there’s another need to share hysterical, crazy, frightening information.  The people who share this with you are “seeking emotional communion.”
 
So, if you’ve had enough of random links ending up every way you turn, yet are ready to embrace the emotional communion, try these four ways to reduce the noise in your life:  

1. Keep track of all your social profiles and go ahead and take the plunge: delete the ones you never use. If you’ve got a reputation to maintain, there’s no need to clutter it by keeping around profiles you haven’t updated in years.


2. Maintain your privacy settings. Have you checked out Facebook’s edit options? You can control how many friends updates you see, and unless you want to, you never have to look at another Farmville score again. If you’re on Buzz, make sure you’re aware that all your GChat status updates will be posted as a Buzz, making for more communication fodder. Also, all Buzzes show up on your live Google profile. You can change both of these options by clicking the “Connected Sites” link and unconnecting everything you’ve got.


3. Take a day off. Every week, try to do something drastic: turn your phone off for a day (gasp. I know, I know. But let’s be realistic, if you’ve got a day off, you should be celebrating the fresh air and sunshine, or catching up on sleep). And a funny thing happens when you take a digital break and come back -- all those messages are still there waiting for you!


4. Meet your friends and family. Instead of carrying on real relationships over the WWW, try moving the WWW into the real space.  Pick up the phone when you receive an email, or walk over to a desk if you can. Plan to have family members over to share photo albums instead of posting them to a Facebook wall. Say hello to friends visiting the same establishment as you instead of greeting their Foursquare check-in with badge brags. In order to keep your relationships solid, it’s important to spend a little IRL quality time and really get to know people in more than 140 characters.

Brands usually do everything to not act or talk stupid, in public or anywhere their consumers may see them. You could also say it’s usually not smart to act stupid, to share your inner stupidness in social situations, included social media. But Diesel shows just how compelling, how insightful from a brand positioning, messaging and target demo perspective a “little stupid” can be!

Diesel’s recent campaign “Be Stupid” is a total deep integrated marketing dive -- digitally/socially, store level, traditional media -- into creating a counter cultural POV. A total “We”, not “Them” state of mind. Simply, “Be Stupid” is the ideological twin of Apple’s historic “Think Different” campaign.  It took an Einstein to bring Apple’s effort to life.  The face of a genius was not needed here, just the face of a bold brand to drive real relevance for a consumer looking for the "it" to put down real dough in order to be part of something real…stupid!

The “Be Stupid” campaign featured an extremely engaging, very elegantly simple word based video that told the stupid story on their site, via YouTube, Facebook and other places-http://www.diesel.com/be-stupid/. It tells how easy it is to be smart, how expected it is to do the “smart thing” and how being stupid (aka a “contrarian”) takes the stuff of real stuff…another aka -- “balls”! The video is one great piece of communication, but not the only one. The outdoor posters riff off the same song sheet and the sentiment on the retail windows are real world “social media” looking to literally bring you in.

Eye candy today is everywhere. It’s the reality of our rich graphical playing field. But, Diesel’s “Be Stupid” effort shows why a really well thought out marketing idea that makes people think beyond the brand, will always be the smartest way to elevate a brand.

This stupid post was written by Cliff Medney and designed by Ryan Kitson!

It looks so easy: you pull out a camera, live your life, and stick it up on YouTube for everyone to see. But if only it was that easy. In actuality, creating good online video that will reach an audience and interest people is much more complicated than simply uploading it. As a video creator you need to know how to best capture your subject, the best route of channel, and how to get the absolute most out of your energy. Here are five simple but effective rules to remember as you start on your journey to video bliss.

1. Your equipment is important. Lots of books will tell you that it doesn’t matter what kind of camera you use, or how clean your edit is- and they're lying to you. Of course you can grab the video setting on your digicam and try the whole thing in just one take. Maybe if you’re Gary Vee you can actually get a great piece of footage from that, too. But, if you’re a company trying to produce quality content the first time around, and clocks and wallets are ticking, you should probably put in a little more work. Flip Cam’s are absolutely fantastic for raw, on the go footage. For everything and anything else, reach out to a trusted production co.  Not only will your video look less grainy but the sound quality will be out of this world compared to anything you would have achieved on a pocket cam.

2. There’s more than just YouTube… but use YouTube. Blip.tv, UStream, Vimeo… there are plenty of websites to choose from when it’s time to upload your videos to the Internet; and they all have benefits. Some can be viewed in countries where others cannot. Some have better picture quality. However, in Social Media, when the aim of the game is to go where the people go, you cannot (at least right now) beat YouTube. And remember, with YouTube’s embed codes, you can feel free to plaster that video in lots of other spaces-  try a myriad of websites, bloggers, communities, emails- and still get all your analytics in one place.

3. Remember your  ABC’s of tags and titles. Be as simple yet descriptive as possible when you fill in that “title” field during the YouTube upload. A video about Washington DC travel in March, for example, could be titled “March DC Trip” but how much better would a title like “Washington DC Cherry Blossom Festival Getaway” be? Plenty helpful, since many people would be searching for “Cherry blossom” or “festival” and not specifically the month. This also applies for the tags you include during your upload. And don’t forget to include tags that hit on your research and are selected based on volume and competition.

4. Call on all of your promotional super powers. Video does not work alone. The biggest mistake some creators make is to spend time and money working on this fantastic movie, uploading it, and then sitting back and watching. What a waste of the resources at your fingertips! Chances are you’ve got a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account. You might even have a community or website, or even an email list. Go ahead and stick a call-to-action all over these properties. Link to the video in your emails and on Twitter. Embed the video in your website and Facebook page or community. Just because your video “lives” on one website doesn’t mean it can’t travel to others, and sometimes reaching out to the people is more cost effective than waiting for them to reach you. During editing of your video, you can also put in some URL’s you want people to go back and visit, giving the link backs a circle effect.

5. If at first you don’t success… then dig into your wallet.  If view numbers right off the bat are important to you, or you have zero time or resources to put into growing a following, remember that videos can pay to become a “YouTube Promoted Video.” Promoted Videos appear higher on search results, show up in the sidebar of YouTube homepages and channel pages, and appear higher on Google Search. This pay-per-click system encourages you to pay whenever you receive a new view, making it imperative that you also exhaust every other resource you can as well. Paid partnerships are also available. Finally, by keeping an eye on the YouTube blog, you can submit applicable videos for the Spotlight of the Month, cherry picked videos that include a theme YouTube is promoting for the month.  Of course, price should be analyzed on whether or not this is an effective means, based on results of other methods.

Nearly 70% of young people believe corporations can make a bigger difference in the world than governments.

This eye-opening statistic was quoted by Chrysi Philalithes, director of digital strategy and marketing for Product (RED), at last week’s Social Media Week panel on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).   Buyers are demanding that brands be more responsible, and that most sacred of relationships – consumer loyalty – is at stake.  This creates a huge opportunity for corporations that perform with purpose.

Consumer loyalty is very personal, and how we differentiate between our increasing options is changing.  Purchasing a product is also making a value judgment on the corporate values behind it.  Beyond altruistic goals like saving the world, CSR is a mechanism for brands to align themselves with consumers in a highly relevant space: The support of ideas and values that impact them.  

At the opening of the CSR panel, which also included executives from Justmeans, Pepsi and Ogilvy, moderator Jamie Daves of ThinkSocial offered three significant traits of CSR:

• CSR spreads a powerful message and ideas
• CSR is essential to do
• CSR is highly personal and resonate

Throughout the discussion, a set of emerging best practices came into focus:

1.  Social media is a mechanism for corporate values to transform a brand.  It allows companies to close the gap between a consumer’s instinct to buy responsibly and the lack of awareness that may prevent that.  Demand is growing from consumers, activist groups and the media for corporate transparency.  They’re talking about you on Twitter, Facebook and blogs already, so be a part of that conversation – even the negative – and help shift it towards social values.

2.  It’s a movement, not a moment.  Start with people who are passionate about an idea, and help them bring it to their community.  The days of, “Buy this and we’ll donate 10 cents!” are giving way to companies providing information and leadership beyond hard dollars.  It’s not only about what brands do themselves, but what they facilitate consumers to do, creating far deeper impact.  How does a brand become relevant to a new generation?  By helping them bring their ideas to life.

3.  Take an existing program, add social media and create incentive to spread it.  One Justmeans client put $150,000 towards issues that were relevant to their employees, who nominated and voted on the causes.  In year two, they brought it online.  The 27 nominated organizations provided blurbs about why they deserved a grant, which the client posted through Justmeans and employees began to spread.  This transformed the client into an ambassador for each initiative, giving a social media platform and exposure to all of them, not just the ultimate winners. 

4.  Embed the message in communications that people already use.  Last World AIDS Day, Product (RED) partnered with Twitter to let users post their Tweets in red.  The message truly resonated, giving users the ability to show awareness and support through Tweets they’d be sending already.  A recent breast cancer awareness campaign had women mysteriously posting their bra color as a Facebook status.  While money raised may be one metric, the generation of awareness is equally important.  Harnessing communication methods that people already use can create significant impact.

5.  The right platform is where the people you want to reach are.  Who’s likely to care about your message and what are they doing?  Social media strategy needs to be about arming the people who will become your strongest advocates.  CSR campaigns should be developed around the platforms those individuals most actively use.  You have to know who you’re trying to engage and where to find them.

6. Social platforms are being mapped to social change.  As a global society, there is a fundamental shift towards the realization that we want to bring change and have to do it together.  Society is being transformed by how we engage on social platforms, not just for personal connection but for how we connect with the world.  Ideas can spread like never before, and a strong CSR strategy gives brands the opportunity to take a leadership role in that conversation. 

It’s Social Media Week in New York City, and the digital scene is buzzing with conferences and brimming with ideas and insights about a culture that’s constantly in flux.  Yesterday, I attended the Advertising Research Foundation's event dedicated to 'The Science of Social Media' (#ARFSMC), and found myself particularly engaged by a presentation given by Jeff Doak, Chief Technology Officer of Converseon, called Social Media Mentoring Metrics.  Jeff’s presentation revealed some staggering insights into the analysis of social media metrics that confront the challenges of analyzing metrics via the confines of automated tools that are still in the infant stages of their technical evolution.

The first monitoring metrics that came under the lens were metric returns for “volume”—which is basically to say how many times a brand is mentioned, period.  The context for which a brand was mentioned in is, of course, up for grabs, and that is one of the biggest problems.  Volume without context is really pretty useless, and it’s really up to humans to decide how that volume aligns with overarching business objectives.  One trip to Twitter shows you that your friend Bill did, in fact, wake up this morning with his usual glass of Uncle Matt’s and drove to work in his Prius—and not much else. There’s your volume.

Well, what about influence?  Maybe Bill’s got the hottest blog right now on a low-emission lifestyle and over a hundred-thousand devoted readers who are hanging on his every tweet.  That’s not something your influence metrics are going tell you at face value, and those metrics are never going to provide perspective for the way your brand fits into Bill’s sphere of influence.  That’s the kind of pithy insight that only comes with human analysis.

Lastly, we really can’t forget about sentiment metrics, which is to say how people are talking about your brand.  Current social media monitoring tools measure something called “automated sentiment” which is basically an algorithm that searches for “sentiment words” and their proximity to your brand or product name.  Huh?  This analysis seems logical in a mathematical way, but we’re talking about words and that arbitrary phonetic symbolism that begets meaning.  Human beings can also be pretty witty, and as Jeff so bluntly puts it, “machines don’t get sarcasm or slang.” 

Enter the hammer and the scalpel.  Jeff prescribes the use of one these tools, metaphorically of course, to analyze your social media monitoring metrics.  The hammer is most appropriate for those analysts looking to smash into that data and create some cool charts that’ll impress the boss.  For the rest of us, it’s really the scalpel that going to come in handy.  The scalpel is best suited for that kind of detailed analysis that requires a surgeon’s precision and a human being’s understanding.  Scalpels let you bisect tiny segments of consumer data to bring under the lens and expertly carve around other irrelevant brand chatter.  It’s the scalpel that’s going to help you understand if it’s Bill’s preference for your organic orange juice that’s driving sales, and how you might leverage that affinity to connect with your consumers.

Right now, we’re working with social media metrics that have been around for as little as eighteen months.  The measurements are bound to get better over time, and it’s nice to imagine having tools that create easily accessible and understandable data.  But that’s just not where we’re at right now.  I have faith in the human ingenuity that will eventually lead to greener pastures, but until then, I’m keeping my scalpel on hand.   Kudos to Jeff from Converseon for an enlightening presentation.

Here’s hoping that little cyber Groundhog doesn’t see his shadow on the internet today.  Then he’ll be able to chatter his little teeth together, put his nose to the ground, and start sniffing out a whole new perspective for 2010. 

Five digital marketing trends I would gladly wave goodbye to:

1. Template Flash-Game Banner Ads – Wherever I’m at on the internet—reading an article, browsing product reviews, searching for tech support—the last thing I want to do is  STOP what I’m doing and throw a frame of virtual ten pin.  This is just not an enticing offer, and when it comes from a one-stop-shop website for flash banners, it doesn't portray the product or service in a unique way whatsoever.  Flash games can definitely be fun, but make sure your consumers want one and make it original.

2. Keyword-Stuffed Websites – I’m a human being not a piece of software.  This means that I have a really low tolerance for repetition, especially in sales copy, and all those unnecessary keywords start to bore me quickly.  When I land on a site that’s stuffed full of keywords and zero content, I start to think the product might be full of similar flaws.

3. Relentless Pop-Up Ads – You know the ones that appear out of nowhere and, with Gladiator strength, obstruct your browser window.  The animation is swirling and flashing all over the screen and finding the minimize button is a needle-in-the-haystack type of quest.  After much anxiety and obnoxious distraction, you can finally move on to whatever it was you were doing before you were digitally assaulted. 

4. Targeted Social Media Ads – Believe it or not, I don’t really mind being marketed to when I’m on Facebook.  The ads don’t really bother me because they’re nicely sequestered to the margins, but I really DO mind the content.  Ads that have fished my user profile and responded with teeth whitening discounts for New York City copywriters make me feel the exact opposite of special.  I don’t mind that they’re fishing per se, but they could bait that hook with something a little more creative. 

5. Irrelevant Landing Pages – Sometimes, I think landing pages were created in a vacuum, free from all external influence and completely void of oxygen.   There’s just no other explanation for landing pages that don’t align with the PPC ad or other link you’ve clicked on.  Consistency and relevancy really matter in targeted, niche markets, and when I get to a landing page that doesn’t fulfill my expectations, I leave. 

So if all goes well today and one cyber Groundhog pops his head up and finds himself out of the shadow poor digital marketing campaigns, my top 5 just might become obsolete.  It’s not real likely, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed anyway.