No more clicks

I did something very strange the other day. I clicked on a banner. Now with click through rates hovering around 0.2% on a so so day and the fact that we know there are some habitual clickers (god knows why) and some accidental clickers like my children (god knows where to). I think it is something to be remarked on. I don't click is becoming the modern equivalent of i don't watch ads.

Now I have to fess up. It was on a business site and the banner was taking me to a sister publication so you could argue it was a button or a link dressed up as a banner. So the only time i have clicked on a banner is in a contextual environment. I am not saying network buys don't cost in. Network buys clearly make sense for mass market products and awareness objectives but for specialist categories and b2b you may be better off looking at specialist networks or finding different ways to spend your money, like sponsored email, smarter search, links and buttons. Focussing on those people in the market mood. Never the less it still feels odd that this great thing the internet is premised on its ability to serve up relevant content but we still deliver marketing messages on a semi random basis.

The easy counter argument to this is that brands do invest in network display campaigns because it works; but you would be assuming that they can track activity through to sale. You would be surprised how few brands do this as well as they profess to.

Do you click?

The only marketing rule you will ever need

I have worked it out, forget your top ten lists. I know we all like lists but there is only one rule you need in the new marketing environment and that is.

Be interesting.

Ok we have known this for a while and you could say it is just another way of saying content, content, content.

But to be interesting you have to all of the following.

(1) segment your market - create personas if we want to get digital about it.
(2) understand your customers requirements
(3) give them the personal treatment
(4) be relevant
(5) get to the point quickly
(6) ignore your (product) agenda until you know what the consumer wants

I quite like the way HSBC give lots of business advice on their business banking pages but there again the choice for them is easy, business banking is inherently dull. I also had a look at Evans's website (the cycle people). They have some interesting areas like 'ride2work', 'news and events' but they should be part of the landing environment not something to do after you have scanned the product pages. And why don't they have lots of pages about great places to cycle or videos. If it is there, it is very well hidden.

Sales people always want the products up front which is ironic given that sales people always say good ones engage the customer before they talk about the product. You know the car salesman who asks you how you are going to use the car, what sort of trips you will make before talking petrol and cars.

Are we all just too good at ignoring our own advice?

Big budgets can lead to lazy marketing

Some marketers have too much money. If they had limited budget they would :-

(1) Make sure the website was a focal point of the business
(2) Invest time in creating interesting content covering the category, events to video.
(3) Get a few staff to blog their little socks off
(4) Optimise the site for organic search
(5) Share as much as possible with key influencers
(6) Capture customer data, give customers a personal service, do CRM, maximise retention
(7) Give their brand personality
(8) Develop affiliate relationships - old style and new style affiliates
(9) Link, link, link

... and so on and so on

If they have too much money they :-

(a) Do big ads and talk about big ideas, (not lots of great little ideas)
(b) Run regular DM programs, saying the same thing to the same prospects again and again.
(c) Do lots of paid search
(d) Try to sell off the page
(e) Talk about being customer centric
(f) Copy their nearest competitors

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Inactive sponsorship

I am sure i am setting myself up for a fall and will be accused of being too left brain about this but I don't really get a sponsorship. What do Samsung get out of sponsoring Chelsea? What return on investment does Vodafone get from England Cricket. I think they call this passive sponsorship.

I definitely understand sponsorship when there is a shared relevance so Flora sponsoring the London Marathon and, is it, Pedigree sponosoring Crufts Dog Show. And it is even better when a sponsorship is active or strategic, where the sponsorship showcases the product or service. So I am thinking IBM and Wimbledon, Ariel and Championship Whites, SAP and HP in F1.

Can anyone explain what they get out of logo sponsorship?

Gordon Brown - not a banker

The title is a bit direct, and i have gone a bit off piste but i think i can relate it to the general themes in the blog. Consumer behaviour.

Gordon Brown is concerned about regulation of mortgage providers - good. He has expressed a view that in future they limit borrowers to three times salary - bad. Stupid idea, too late.

Free markets tend to be more efficient, this recession is a painful adjustment. But it is a bit late to interfere. The horse has bolted, gone 300 miles down the road, turned into a soap factory and has gone a bit Shergar.

If you create rules then people readjust their behaviour accordingly (Goodhart the deputy governor of the Bank of England pointed this out in the 1990's). What will householders do if we we limit them to three times salary? Panic or get poorer. Everyone remortgaging will be at the mercy of the lenders, paying higher rates because they cant get a mortgage. More people will try to sell find they can't. Result house prices go down further.

It is a bit late but if the banks had been regulated in the same we restricted householders (don't lend more than 4 times income or assets) much of this would not have happened. We all knew house prices were too high in 2003 and 2004, what we did not know was the banks would lend recklessly.

The threat of thrift

We did some market research the other day and observed some new consumer attitudes. Consumers - thats you an me - are cutting back their spending. However a few months ago it would have been something they would have rationalised with 'we didn't need it' or 'the old one is still working fine'. But now they are happy to say 'we haven't got the money', 'we can't afford it'. Expenditure is not just being postponed, it is being cancelled. And being wealthy isn't quite as cool as it was.

Economists call this the paradox of thrift, to get out of a recession you need money to be circulating - in other words we should all spend money - but the rational choice of an individual is not to spend but to save for a rainy day.

What does this mean for producers and marketers? Not sure but ostentatious wealth and consumption is off the agenda and it sounds like the recession could get a whole lot worse.

Next week i am going to look for some sunnier news.

Googleators and market concentration

I read earlier today that there are 133 website aggregators. Sorry, I don't know whether that is UK, Worldwide, Western civilisation or one specific category. The article made the point that they are having to spend more and more on marketing to maintain traffic levels. But you can't help but wonder why there isn't just one great big googleator to aggregate the aggregators. It would save them all that marketing spend. Seems pretty obvious logic that a winner (or a very few) could potentially take all. All they are doing is delivering information. The economies of scale or more to the point the dis-economies of scale seem clear. Big is better. Small is nowhere.

Market domination in information services, but why not other markets? The Internet has essentially just giving us access to much much more information so you would expect the 'good products' to float to the top and the bad ones to suffer accordingly. I would be fascinated to know whether we are observing greater market concentration so a fewer number but albeit bigger companies dominating markets. And before you ask, surrounded by lots of smaller organisations focusing on specific segments and niches. Why be medium sized - whatever that is?

The Internet has made it easier for companies to enter markets and also provides them with greater reach quicker. But on the flip side better access to information for consumers may have resulted in any brand with inferior products or services struggling to maintain customers and share.

Sounds like a PHD topic.