At the end of the day, the agency job is to equip the clients with a strategy in connecting with their customers, a platform to do that, best practices in managing it and tracking metrics to allow R.O.I. reporting. But the actual implementation is still very much by the client. The only possible way to monetize is a retainer fee to help the client stay on the intended path, or help them in making tweaks to fine-tune the entire strategy.

So if you ask me if there’s money to be made here, I will probably say no. As an agency, knowing how to deal with social media allows you to integrate them into your digital strategy, making your outreach campaigns more viral, more influential, more human. Social media marketing should be seen as part of your client digital strategy and it is key that the agency is able to harness this to build better brands via the digital space.

On my way to work in the morning, the Jetstar Asia’s radio ad always catches my attention. I think it resonates strongly with my belief in content marketing. 90% of the ad talks about highlights of the destination, content that tourist visiting will like to know. That’s an excellent example of content marketing. You share contents that are relevant to your potential customers, allow them to consume these contents, over a period of time, build a relationship and influence a sale at the end of the day.

I was hoping to get more information on the ad about nightlife in Taipei from their website. To my surprise, there was indeed a free travel guide for Taipei that I could download for free. 2 thumbs up!

I see an extension to this radio ad campaign to the digital space by publishing these guides onto a Jetstar travel blog, allow their customers to comment or share experiences and thus, completing the entire experience. The blog posts which are search engine-friendly (if they are properly crafted) will also help drive relevant traffic to the website.

I will fly Jetstar the next time I visit Taipei. ;o)

Google recently launched the SideWiki plug-in for firefox and IE browsers. With SideWiki installed, anyone can now contribute comments to any webpages. Yes, any webpages. That effectively converted the entire world wide web to a singular social web that empowers consumer to comment on anything & everything.

The SideWiki feature adopts a user rated system that determines the ranking of each comment. Comments that are voted ‘useful’ gets a higher ranking. Abuses can be reported to Google so the folks there can review the offending comment and decide if it should be removed.

Brands hesitant in embracing the social web now has a new challenge right at their doorstep. SideWiki has basically created a comment box on all their webpages allowing anyone to pen their views. Think about your competitors posting a comment that focuses on the weaknesses of your product and emphasizing their strengths over yours. Think about happy customers complimenting your staff for a pleasant experience at one of your outlets or a unhappy customer complaining about the quality of your services. Can you ignore these like you used to because it is happening elsewhere and not on your website?

This is major step forward in the transition of the world wide web to social web and there is more to come. The key is to start learning how to embrace the social web, understand and accept that your corporate website has became a platform where consumers can now openly discuss, comment and compliment you. Listen to the consumers and address issues to deliver a more consumer-focus, consumer-centric and consumer-driven service / product. Equip your people with skills in handling positive and negative feedback and not sweep them under the carpet.

Ain’t you glad you are in this exciting business? ;o)
Tip – Great stats for you when preparing your decks!

1. Identify keywords used for search (either by guessing, online media companies or online tools like Google Keyword Tool)

2. Craft out Ad copy, focusing on product USP and Promo mechanics

3. Link to website (either homepage, promotion page, microsite or specific product pages).

This method is not wrong to some extend but if you give it a deeper thought, the entire process could be more focused, direct and conversion-driven. I term it as the keyword-to-conversion model. Basically, conversion starts from the point a search attempt is made.

The key here is to identify the search objective through the search words/ phrase used. Based on the search objective, the ad copy has to be crated to address this. The aim here is to allow the ad copy to be relevant to the search objective, thus allowing the consumer to be able to relate to the ad. With this, we can achieve what we call a ‘true click-thru’.

A ‘true click-thru’ is a result of a non-implusive, need-driven action. It basically filters real clicks from those that are merely in for the wron reason, thus reducing your PPC budget, increasing ROI. Let me emphasize that this approach is strictly for Search networks and is not applicable if you are advertising on a content network.

With a ‘true click-thru’, 50% of the battle is won. Remember, the person that is coming onto your site now has a ‘real’ intention / objective and is not merely browsing. As such, the landing page is crucial. It has to make reference to the ad copy and search objective. For example, if the search objective is to compare prices of a service, the ad copy could say ‘voted most cost effective service by ABC magazine’, providing a point of comparison. The landing page should further emphasize the concept of ‘comparison’ – such as allowing the consumers to select some brands and do a side by side comparison. With this, a high level of interest and relevance is maintained.

In a conversion site, traffic resulting from a PPC campaign on a search network needs to be guided. Imagine someone comes up to you and says he wants to buy an iPod. You bring him to the entrance of yor shop and drop him off there and say ‘Feel free to browse around’. ???

Guide them around. Create informational paths within the site that has a purpose in mind – conversion. From the landing page where you have shown that your service and product is great, bring them to the next page to reinforce that buying decision. I called this the Influencing Page. In this page, contents are create to reinforce buying decisions. It could be testimonials, it could be a summary of USPs, it could be a promotion to create the need to ‘buy now’.

Remember – in a conversion site, it is important to craft contents that are relevant to the search objective, guide them through the site, reinforce buyng decision and then convert. The process should be sharp and sweet.

If this has been your design strategy for banner ads, think again.

Designing a banner ad can be as simple as above, and at the same time, be as complex as you can imagine. I use the 3Rs to help my designers remember:-

1. Relevance

Banner copy, call to action and visuals need to be relevant to audience’s needs as well as the webpage content that the banner resides on. If the product is about sport injury treatment, the webpage is a mountain biking online magazine that is talking about stunts, a relevant Banner Ad message could be “Still feeling that ache from your last stunt?” instead of “Cutting edge technology in sports injury treatment”.

2. Reference

The banner message should be able make references to people, incidents, events, equipment, etc to the target audience. Using the same mountain biking banner ad as an example again, “Benefited by mountain bikers around Asia since 1999″ or “Used by the Singapore mountain biking team”.

3. Relate

Allow target audience to be able to relate to the message, creating the thought – What if it is me? Consumers need to be able to relate what you are trying to communicate to themselves on a personal level in order for you to create that motivation for a ‘true click-through’.

Bottomline is – When designing a banner ad, it is not about what you want to tell the consumer. That’s Marketing 1.0. Change your mindset in your design strategy and ask yourself, what does the consumer wants?

We heard about SEO – Search Engine Optimization all the time. How about ensuring your digital strategy is social media optimized too? SMO should be a natural part of your digital strategy. The challenges that we face in embracing social media as marketing tools is uncertainity in results. Here are some principles that I subscribe to when working with social media.

It starts with 2-way conversation.

Social media is about establishing a relationship. A relationship that is built from conversations – 2 way communications, to be precise. Ask questions, answer questions, share thoughts, discuss, co-create. Relationships are built like this offline too. This is the key difference between traditional media where it is 1-way.

Forget about quantity. Focus on quality.

I am sick of followers on Twitter that follows you, hoping that you will reciprocate and follow back. They are doing this just to increase the number of followers. The question is so what you have 10,000 followers? Can you boost that you can influence them with your thoughts? Sway them into making a buying decision? or simply that you can reach them with whatever messages that you think you want them to hear? That’s using marketing 1.0 methods in a web 2.0 world. It beats to have 10 followers that engages with you on a constant basis that to have 10,000 whom never even care to read about your tweets. Quality please.

Forget about viral

Viral is a natural product of correct content for the correct audience. Having ’share this with someone wouldn’t work if your content does not connect at all. Don’t harp on viral. Work on what your audiences want. Viral will come.

Set realistic goals and take little steps at a time

Social media is not the gateway to reach out to entire online population. Don’t expect phenomenon results like what you read in the papers about how successful Dell has used Twitter to increase sales of their boxes. They probably take much more time in planning, executing and tweaking before it works for them. Take little steps and keep the team motivated.

Be patient & enjoy.

Omgili

Omgili is more than just a forum search engine – they also have a product review search platform, which scours product review sites across the web for your product or company.

Vanno

Newly-launched Vanno calls itself “The Company Reputation Index”.  It’s a social platform where the community submits news stories, blog posts, videos, and other bits they find around the web about companies.  Through Vanno’s voting system, a “reputation index” is quantified for each company.

Board Reader

Like Omgili, Board Reader is a forum search engine; however, it also searches through videos posted in forums, Twitter conversations, and even IMDB.

Trendpedia

Not only can you to search the blogosphere for company or product mentions; but also compare buzz trends with mentions of your competitor.  You’re presented with a graph, and you can click on any part of it to view posts from a certain date.

BlogPulse

BlogPulse is a window into the blogosphere… open it daily to discover the people, issues, blogs, posts, commentaries, tidbits and news that bloggers are discussing.