Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Category: Advertising

  • Google out to bat for non-profits, hits home run

    Google announced a slew of products specifically tailored to non-profits two days ago.

    First, all their apps – Google Apps for Domains, etc. – are all free.

    Google Checkout transaction processing is free to non-profits until 2009.

    Here’s the game changer. Google Grants is an application process to qualify for free AdWords advertising. Where commercial organizations pay out the nose for top keywords, if your non-profit is a certified 501(c)(3) and is chosen as a Google Grants recipient, you can go head to head with corporate America for mission-critical keywords and spare your budget.

    This is big – very big. It will give non-profits access to huge audiences and resources without needing huge budgets, and the smaller the non-profit, the more benefit they’ll be able to get if chosen for the grant.

    Hats off to you, Google. You may be Big Brother, but at least you’re more or less benevolent.

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  • 2008 Super Bowl Ad : $2,700,000 per spot

    That’s a heck of a lot of money.

    Think about what else that money could buy.

  • The Money Vaccine

    A bunch of folks are pointing out Dove’s new onslaught campaign, which goes part of the way towards helping women deal with self esteem issues, but it could be a much broader scope than that. Want to inoculate yourself, your friends, and especially your children against not only the beauty industry, but everyone and everything else?

    Teach yourself and others how to follow the money. When you see a commercial or advertisement, discuss with your kids what the commercial is for, what they want to you to buy, and what tactics they will use to try to make you buy it.

    “Honey, this is a commercial for mascara. The manufacturer is going to suggest that if you don’t use their product, you will not be pretty, which of course, is not true. They’ll be using several ways to attack you – and it is an attack on you, just as real as someone punching you – including peer pressure and the granfalloon attacks.”

    Maybe it’s cultural in America, but we LOVE to know how the magic trick works, even if it spoils our enjoyment of the trick. There’s no better way to inoculate yourself, friends, and loved ones than to pull the curtain back from advertisers and marketers and show them the catalog of tricks. There’s no better way to defeat a salesperson than to list off the tricks as they use them, and if you don’t particularly like the salesperson, yes, you can list them out loud.

    “Yes, fine, Ben Franklin close, time limited offer, exclusivity close. Dude, have you read anything besides Tom Hopkins and Zig Ziglar?”

    YOU have power over your mind. Share that power with others, and take it away from advertisers.

  • New PDF guide to support your favorite blog or podcast

    I just posted up on the Financial Aid Podcast a PDF guide, one page, 5 power promoter tips. If you as an audience member of a new media outlet like blogs, podcasts, or social networks want to help your favorites grow, grab this guide and share it.

  • Know the codes and what they do

    If you’re a podcaster using GoDaddy promo codes as part of Podshow or Blubrry, it’s essential to know the numbers behind your promo codes and what they can be used for. Each code has different uses, and if you’re marketing your codes to your listeners, it’s vital to know which codes will fit their needs.

    For Podshow Podcasters:

    Code 1 is 10% off an order.
    Code 2 is 5 off any order30 or more.
    Code 3 is 2 off a dot com domain name.

    For Blubrry Podcasters, I believe there’s a single code which nets 10% off.

    Take a look at the GoDaddy products and services out there. Domain names are what they’re best known for, but they have other products and services that will probably net higher payouts that the1-3 per domain name you as a podcaster get for promoting their services.

    For example, SSL certificates are used heavily in e-commerce. If you have business listeners, promoting SSL certs is a great opportunity, as some certs cost299/year. The promotions for 10% off the order are the only discount code that will work, and that will save users 30.

    Do the math on the codes, especially for Podshow Podcasters.

    Code 1 saves 10%. Code 2 saves a maximum of 16.7%, and declines in value as the order size gets larger. Code 3 saves 22%, but only applies to a single product line.

    Economy hosting, for example, is about43. Which will save a listener more, code 1 or code 2?

    Code 2. A user will save 11.6% vs. 10%.

    If you’re committed to providing the best value to both listeners and advertisers, make sure you know your products and services that you’re advertising, and help people understand how they can save the most money.

  • A Missed Opportunity for Podcasting?

    A Missed Opportunity for Podcasting?

    Just got off the phone with a company representative that wants to do a regional sponsorship for a few grand here in New England. My show was very much not the right fit, so I talked the rep through navigating MySpace and Google to locate other podcasters in the area, as well as pointing them at the New England Podcasting home page for other great shows in New England that might be a better fit.

    Here’s the zinger – the rep was on every major podcast network site out there, and couldn’t search by locale. This is a local sponsor, and there was no way for them to say, “Show me all the podcasts in Massachusetts” that they could find. MySpace is one of the few sites that publishes that info.

    And Todd Cochrane – I stand very much corrected in my initial statement about demographics in the last post. This advertiser wants a specific area because their ad spend would be wasted if the target audience isn’t within an easy drive of the locale, so demographics very much do matter here. Crow ain’t bad with dijon mustard. A little feathery.

    To everyone out there running their own podcast or podcast network – if you want to take advertising, make sure you have a media kit. Want to see an awesome media kit? Check out the Mommycast media kit. It’s a thing of beauty. If you run a podcast network, please help make it easy for people like this potential sponsor to figure out which shows would be a good fit for them, right on your site.

    Maybe I’ll add how to create a nice media kit to PodCamp Europe.

  • I don't care about podcast demographics and neither should you

    Okay, that’s not strictly true, but it is true that podcast demographics aren’t terribly important to me for the purposes of audience building. Why? Because this is new media, not broadcast media. What’s the difference?

    In broadcast media, you send out a message to your target audience and hope there’s enough relevant people in that database that some of them take action and buy your product or service. Broadcast marketers tend not to give a rat’s ass about feedback unless it involves a lawsuit; the only feedback they want to hear is the ringing of the cash register.

    In new media, you send out a message to people who want to hear from you. Not only do they want to hear from you, they want to talk to you and each other, and if you do your job well as a new media creator, they’ll want to talk to lots of other people about your media. Here’s the thing. Except for the highest profile people like the Scobles and Pirillos of the world, it’s very hard to quickly make a judgement call on who is an influencer and who is not. Thus, either you spend a crapload of time researching everyone carefully in your database, or you treat everyone like an influencer.

    That’s the secret that broadcast marketers are missing. For example, with my show, the Financial Aid Podcast, a broadcast marketer would say, okay, the audience is students, so specifically market and target 18 – 21 year old American students. If a listener who is a 33 year old parent of an 8 year old and a 5 year old, broadcast marketing tactics would say completely ignore that person, because they have no sales potential.

    However, that broadcast marketer is going to miss the fact that said parent has their own podcast with thousands of listeners, and a positive mention of your show could instantly add 10% more audience to your own show. New media marketers understand this one fundamental tenet (which is also a Buddhist one):

    Everyone is connected.

    In your marketing efforts, step back and think about your audience, whether you’re a broadcast marketer or a new media marketer. Are you excluding a group of people from your market segmentations – and if you are, who do they know that you’re no longer able to reach? If you have advertising on your podcast – do your advertisers understand that demographics are less important than word of mouth and influence?

    Edit: I’m clarifying this post to mean demographics shouldn’t matter as much for your audience building efforts as a podcaster. The subsequent post will explain why they’re still relevant to advertisers.

  • Why MySpace marketing is still relevant

    A lot of folks on the cutting edge have already written off MySpace and headed to different online communities. This is perfectly understandable – MySpace has been plagued with spyware, usability issues, and an image problem that Madison Avenue firms would cringe at. The cutting edge has left, and the hip crowd has left for greener pastures.

    So, who’s left?

    Everyone else. MySpace is over its Dip, if you’re a Seth Godin follower, and is gaining widespread, mainstream adoption. When the cashier at the supermarket, when the 47 year old account, when the woman on the street is talking about MySpace, it’s hit the mainstream, and the reality is that the bulk of your market – unless it’s cutting edge technologists – is in the mainstream.

    Now is the time to refocus your MySpace marketing efforts. The bots and scripts are slowly coming back, the service is more aggressive about spam, and the numbers of mainstream users are swelling every day. As of this morning, approximately 4 profiles were being added PER SECOND.

    Marketing to MySpace members now also needs to take a more mainstream-friendly approach. If you’re a podcaster, telling people to copy your RSS feed’s URL won’t fly with the mainstream crowd. One click is the limit – make it so easy for your new MySpace audience to get to what you have to offer.

    If you follow powerlaw distributions, about 80% of your potential audience is in the mainstream, and they’re just arriving at the party now. Late to the party, perhaps, but they’re bringing spending money, and at the end of the day, that’s what counts most.

  • Numbers redux

    I talked to a fellow podcaster this evening, who was told by his network (the podcaster and network shall remain nameless) that in order to get sponsor deals, he needs to get his numbers up, hit certain metrics, etc. His network is missing the point because it’s still on the CPM model. CPM is an old media metric that makes little sense for most podcasters, because most podcasts have niche audiences. Even if you have a broad subject, like music, your slice of the overall audience will still be relatively niche compared to the broadcast media numbers advertisers were used to seeing in the 20th century. CPM is a loser for them because they’ll chew up an ad budget quickly, and it’s a loser for the podcaster because the numbers won’t be there to derive a huge income unless you literally have millions of listeners for every episode.

    No, where podcasting shines is in audience engagement. Again, if you sell Gulfstream aircraft, you need to sell one G5 every two years or so to live well. If your podcast has 2 listeners and they both buy airplanes, you’re golden. If your podcast has 2,000,000 listeners and none of them buy airplanes, then your audience is just chewing up your resources.

    Action is all that matters. So where as a podcaster do you get some action? (belay the snickering in the peanut gallery) If you don’t belong to a podcasting network that is managing sponsors for you, your best bet is existing affiliate network programs, like those at Linkshare, Commission Junction, etc. They pay for performance, usually per sales lead. Take a look at some of the top paying performance programs on Commission Junction:

    • Loans.co.uk – $852 EPC (earnings per click)
    • Capital One mortgages – $771 EPC
    • HSBC credit cards – $499 EPC

    Look at some of the payouts per sale:

    • Gay Date.com – $40 per sale
    • WebEx – $130 per sale
    • AN Hosting – $100 per sale

    If you have a specific niche you serve, there are products, services, and advertisers waiting for you to come help them out, and they’re willing to pay. An audience of just 100 people, if 50 bought AN Hosting Packages or WebEx packages, would pay the rent for a month with money left over.

    Leave CPM behind, leave raw audience numbers behind, and start actually making some money AND serving your audience with highly qualified, highly relevant sponsorships that you can get right now.

    Example: consolidate your student loans with the Student Loan Network, and my podcast gets $100 per signed, returned application. All I really need to make expenses for my podcast is 1 loan application a month (to pay for Libsyn). Anything on top of that is gravy.

  • Your brand is not my idea of your brand

    C.C. Chapman sent out a message (okay, more than one) about a contest and promotion he’s heading up for Coca-Cola, called Virtual Thirst. Submit an idea to the contest for a virtual vending machine to be built in Second Life, and if you win, you get flown out to San Francisco to be featured in the video of the making of the vending machine. From the official web site:

    Imagine a world in which a simple vending machine could dispense – not Coca-Cola – but the ESSENCE of Coca-Cola: refreshment, joy, unity, experience… So throw away the box, your expectations and interpretations of what a Coke machine is. Think expansively about the possibilities for having fun and being part of a great experience. Show us your best ideas – what do you wish you could do or see in Second Life? Do not limit yourself to your own abilities to create objects inside of Second Life – find any way to express your idea and get it to us. Let us and the developers of Millions of US help you make them real in Second Life.

    Incidentally, I have to wonder about the following rules for entering:

    You may submit your idea in any of the following ways: – gift an object to us in Second Life – teleport your avatar to https://www.virtualthirst.com/launch and use the drop-box to gift us your object
    – share a video in YouTube – visit https://www.youtube.com/virtualthirst and use the “Connect with VirtualThirst” function to send us a message and attach your uploaded video
    – share an image/description with us in MySpace – visit https://www.myspace.com/virtualthirst and use “Send Message” to post your idea as a message to us
    – US residents only can also e-mail us your idea – send an email to [email protected] with the subject line, “Virtual Thirst Entry” and attach your idea to the email. Please do not use the body of the email to describe your idea.

    Why isn’t blog post in there anywhere?

    Here’s the problem I have with the contest – and I’ll be frank, because as much as I want C.C.’s first major public project to succeed wildly, I think he’d be more disappointed if I didn’t speak my mind.

    Coke’s idea of its brand is not my idea of its brand.

    The essence of Coca-Cola to the company is “refreshment, joy, unity, experience”. For me, as a consumer of its products, Coke products fit the first to a greater or lesser degree, and the other three don’t apply. Coke’s brand to me is essentially a source of cold caffeine, as is Pepsi, and virtually any other soda manufacturer out there. It’s what I drink (usually diet) when coffee does not fit the bill. If you were to sit me down in a focus group and ask me what the brand makes me feel, it makes me feel somewhat energized (or at least less lethargic, as I usually have it after lunch), carbonated, occasionally burpy, and less thirsty. I don’t have a particularly strong attachment to the Coke brand, even though I really enjoy reading about the company’s history and its original recipe.

    And yes, if Classic Coke were truly Classic Coke, a la Pemberton’s recipe, it’d be illegal in the US. Ah, cocawine!

    Can I create an idea around Coke’s idea of its brand? Sure. But it’s not my idea of their brand, and in the age of the empowered consumer, my idea of their brand is more important than theirs. Why? Because my idea and feeling about their brand ultimately dictates whether or not I buy it, whether or not I recommend it. A virtual vending machine dispensing their brand ideal in Second Life will not make me more likely to choose their product over another’s – whose product is most readily available at a good price point at 1:30 PM on weekdays will most likely influence my purchase. Happily for the Coca-Cola company, the Student Loan Network has a contract with a local distributor that provides employees free Coke products at work.

    Ultimately, Coke has fairly little brand equity with me – they’re a provider of beverages, and if I need or want a beverage, they certainly are in the running as a potential source, but they haven’t secured enough brand loyalty with me to make me automatically choose them over another product. They have brand recognition with me, of course, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into sales. What would improve my loyalty to their products? Not sure. I do know that when Pepsi ran its iTunes promotion a while back, I grabbed an awful lot of Pepsi products during the promotion, and I remember it, but since the promotion ended, I’ve defaulted back to convenience and cost as drivers of my purchases.

    So, all that said, here’s my idea for the Virtual Thirst contest. It’s automatically invalid, I guess, because it’s being submitted via a non-approved way, but since I probably will be booked whenever the contest winning time is announced anyway, (if you can’t travel on the dates specified by the contest, you forfeit your prize, and my Google Calendar looks like my defrag map on my hard drive) here’s my idea for Coke’s view of its brand:

    Build a vending machine that you step into and it shows you various types of Creative Commons licensed new media that have been tagged with the same qualities as Coke’s brand – refreshment, joy, unity, experience. As you experience each media type, you vote on whether you think the media fits with its tag. After a while, you’ll have a pool of Creative Commons media – photos, audio, video, music – that the community has voted as the most refreshing, the most joyful, the most unifying, the greatest experience.

    Good luck with the project, C.C., and I hope that you get some truly wild ideas for thing to build in Second Life!

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