The search engine company is making money out of cyber crime. Apart from the ethics of the situation it is a very tricky legal issue; there have been several high profile court cases dealing with this and involving settlements of up to …
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The Lionheart Group & Economy News | Pay Per Click Advertising and …
“Even as we’re taking legal action to try to cut these sites off at source, we’re still working constantly to remove scammy URLs from our index, and we’ll permanently disable AdWords accounts that provide a poor or harmful user …
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Google sues “Google Money” scammers; disabling AdWords account
Habush Habush & Rottier is one of Wisconsin’s largest law firms which specializes in personal-injury cases. The legal eagles became a little miffed when a search for iterations of “Habush” and “Rottier” showed a sponsored link for …
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Lawyers slug it out over Google adwords
Forbes CMO Network, An Insightful Resource For Marketing Leaders I’m serving CMOs by teaming up with the Forbes as a regular contributor . My goal? To guide marketing leadership on how to leverage disruptive technologies and meet business goals. At a more detailed level, this blog will continue to aim at providing nitty-gritty breakdowns, frameworks, and insights. Use these two resources in tandem to both develop strategies, and then implement best practices across the organization. [Companies Must Develop A Holistic Strategy, As Social Technologies Impact Every Customer Touchpoint] Social Technologies are a Horizontal –Not A Vertical Approach It continues to amaze the market that such simple social technologies can impact the entire organization. In fact, social technologies, at the core, allow people to connect to each other without a middle person in the way. As a result, expect social technologies to impact every employee and customer touchpoint. CMOs must prepare in their 2010 planning how to leverage social, not as a skunkworks but as a strategic shift in all communications. Three Resources to Use: Use the Forbes CMO article as fodder for your marketing leadership, here’s the article “CMOs: Consumers Are Connected. You Need To Be, Too” . Below, use the detailed matrix (and the links within them) for the strategists who need to plan out the actual programs. Leave a comment with other suggestions, and benefit from working with the very savvy Web Strategy community, who I learn from every single day (thank you). Web Strategy Matrix: Social Technologies Impact Every Customer Touchpoint Medium Description and Examples Market Maturity Impacts To Brands Digital Advertising Facebook launched “Social Ads” that allow advertisements to appear based on your profile information and friends. Infantile As profiles become portable (like Facebook or Google connect) people can share their personal info for contextual experiences, expect advertising to improve CTRs as social data is added. See how an interactive ad benefitted from my Facebook data . Search Marketing (Paid and SEO) For years, bloggers heavy linking and frequent content have scored high on SERP pages. Recently, Google and Microsoft partnered with Twitter, to offer “Social Search” which means users could received customized SERP based on their friends behaviors and preferences. Pre-Teen Social search will impact a prospects search results are impacted by their friends, this complicates the traditional search marketing strategy of simple keyword placement. Conversational marketing becomes a key factor in search strategy. Learn more about Social Search . Email Marketing Many email vendors like Responsys, ExactTarget, Constant Contact and Zeta Interactive provide simple ways to “share this” email with their friends on social networks. More advanced vendors are offering advanced monitoring, and innovative companies like Flowtown are using email addresses to identify a prospects social networks Infantile Email marketers can no longer be in broadcast mode, but must be prepared for emails to be shared with each other. Furthermore, they should seek how to influence content on the newsfeed in social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. Learn how email and social networks are interlaced . Web Campaigns/Microsites Traditional microsites now have social components from simple “Share this” features to viral videos and community dialog. On the extreme side, Skittles allowed the whole site to be taken over by consumers. Adult A marketing campaign today without social elements is asking to be ignored. To benefit from word of mouth, marketers know spurring a conversation will cause the campaign to spread. Corporate Site Corporate sites are integrating social features, From Community Platforms like Mzinga, Awareness, Pluck, Kickapps, Liveworld (client) they encourage customers to talk back. Young Adult Even if companies don’t want their website to be social, they can’t stop it. Google’s “SideWiki” product allows any webpage to be social using a browser plugin. Mobile, Location Based Location based social networks are quickly emerging among early adopters. Foursquare, Gowalla, and even Twitter are allowing people to share their location, time, and social context. Infantile Advertising and special offers becomes more targeted as brands can triangulate contextual information for consumers –but only if they desire to see it. Sales Efforts Ok, this isn’t a medium, nor the two listed below, but it impacts the scope of the CMO. Most marketers provide sales enablement resources, now these sales folks are armed with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. In fact, many sales folks have had their digital rolodex in LinkedIn for years. Young Adult For savvy marketers, providing social marketing skill training to sales folks will provide them with best practices, and teach them to do more quicker. Those that do nothing run the risk of PR nightmares and even legal problems for the untrained department. Learn about social media policies . Support Efforts What happens in customer support now echos on the social web, from Dooce’s flare up with Maytag to Domino’s Employees snotting on Youtube. Furthermore, customers self-support each other in forums, Facebook, and GetSatisfaction. Adult Marketers must provide a holistic experience to customers, as they don’t care what department you’re in. Read more about Social Support . Product Development A handful of savvy companies like Dell, Starbucks, and Nokia are using social tools to improve the innovation process using tools from Salesforce ideas, Uservoice, or Getsatisfaction Infantile Customers want to innovate with brand, use these free resources to improve brand messaging, test new features, and to develop an army of advocates. Learn how some companies have benefitted from co-innovation . Real World and Events Physical events are now impacted by social technologies, and even virtual events. Attendees will connect to each other, comment about the event, and discuss if even after the event has concluded. Adult Event marketers must develop a strategy to encompass both pre, during, and post event to be successful. Here’s a playbook to integrate social and events . Sharing This Content Occasionally, I get a few emails from people asking if they can use my blog posts in their presentations. Here’s my policy: You cannot package up this content and sell it without my permission. However, it is ok to use for educational purposes as long as you give me credit on the slide, mention it verbally, and link to my blog. Creative Commons defines this as: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Love to hear your comments below, and how social impacts all digital channels.
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Social Impacts Every Customer Touchpoint
At the Altimeter Group, I cover Customer Strategy, which encompasses not only marketing, but also support, expect our discussion to grow as social technologies impact the whole enterprise. The Social Support movement is afoot (see opportunities) , and more companies will be connecting existing marketing and support systems with the social web. Many companies, like Comcast, Wells Fargo, Intel, BestBuy, JetBLue are responding to customers and in some cases, supporting them in near real time. The challenge is that these teams are unable to scale, even a support team of ten full time folks at Comcast will have a hard time responding to all customers in all social channels. As a result, expect companies to resort to scalable ways to respond to customers, such as: The Four Social Support Strategies 1) Do Nothing: Use Legacy Support Channels Some companies will not respond to customers, it’s not in their culture, exposes them to risk, have specific legal or federal restrictions in place, or simply don’t get this space. In this case, these companies may only choose to support customers in their formal forms of support in 1800 numbers or on the official company websites 2) Employee Based Support: Employees Respond to Customers Many companies are assigning people in their support or product teams to respond to customers in the social web. The more conservative the company, the less people are officially able to support. Take for example financial services company Wells Fargo has a handful of “Social Concierges” that tweet on the @Ask_WellsFargo account , they set expectations around hours of service (insert banker’s hours joke here) and not to disclose account information. On the flip side, Best Buy encourages their thousands and thousands of “Blue Shirt” employees to respond using a Twitter CMS system that response from the official @Twelpforc e account. 3) Peer Based Support: Customer to Customer Other companies will approach this by encouraging their top customers to respond on their behalf. By creating online communities where customers can self-support each other using Q&A features like Salesforce “Answers”, or my Lithium’s unique Twitter alerting system that encourages advocates to respond to prospects. (Lithium is an Altimeter Group client). It’s not just on branded communities, many companies encourage support from third party sites such as Get Satisfaction , who centralizes support for all products. 4) Automated Social Support: Computer Generated Tweets Social CRM systems are going to be intelligent, in fact, they’ll start to incorporate bot-like features you can find in web-based chat support, or the logic from interactive voice systems (IVR), and respond to customers. Support and product teams can already tweet from some CRM interfaces, so attaching an intelligence module will be the next step –it could even come from existing employee Twitter handles. Web Strategy Matrix: The Four Social Support Strategies Benefit Downside Rely on Legacy Systems This keeps customers in the right process and funnel that the company is used to. Secondly, it doesn’t reinforce that customers should yell at their friends to get help from a company Missed opportunities: Angry customers could revolt starting a Groundswell, or leave an opportunity for competitors to swoop in and take dissatisfied customers. Employee to Customer Provides a personal touch to help and assist customers, builds relations and trust For large companies, this is not scalable, and will result in companies prioritizing responses to the most authoritative or most urgent. If rolled out to support in all social avenues, it can be costly. Lastly, it teaches customers to yell at their friends to get support . Peer Based Support Companies can quickly scale by responding to customers faster, and more accurately, using automated responses. Unfortunately, not all questions may get answered in a timely way, or answered correctly by staff who may have the inside details. Also, content in knowledge bases, wikis, forums, and Q&A features are often unstructured, messy, and hard to navigate. Automated Social Support Companies can reduce costs by having customers self-support each other. Collectively, customers may often know more about the company’s products than the actual product team. Some customers may feel cheated if they find out they are talking to a bot , and it may be more difficult to build that personal relationship.
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Matrix: The Four Social Support Strategies
This morning, many Yahoo advertisers received an email from Rust Consulting letting them know, they are included in a legal settlement over Yahoo search ads.
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Yahoo Pay Per Click Settlement Details Goes Out To Advertisers
Recently, I attended a corporate event that showcased products related to an industry. Press, media, bloggers, and influencers were invited to attend, and meet a variety of vendors and see products. Featured were members of the company’s advocacy program, (a group of preferred clients), and were given products to demo. Some members of the this advocacy program are bloggers, in particular one with a journalistic background, who’s credibility came into question. While the event continued on, a not-impressed attendee (who claimed to be a journalist) started to make comments that some of the members of the advocacy program were not authentic and went so far as to say quite loudly during the presentation they were “shills” from the back of the room. [Brands, which are often untrusted, must develop advocacy programs to influence their market. Despite good intentions, several risks could result in mistrust and even backlash from those they seek to impress] Let’s break it down, as these same events are likely going to happen to your advocacy program at events and echo online. Opportunities: Advocacy Programs Foster A Low-Cost Trusted Voice Companies aren’t trusted, brands aren’t trusted, and nor are your executives. People trust each other , and now they have the tools to communicate with each other using social technologies and mobile with or without brands involved. As a result, trust has shifted to the participants. Many brands, knowing their credibility has diminished, rely on advocacy programs where trusted members of the community are given a platform and encouraged to speak. Take for example the B2B Microsoft MVP program (I was formerly briefed) selects the most helpful professionals in their space, and anoint their most knowledgeable customers in public, and use the program as a way to get product and program feedback. They MVPs aren’t directly paid, but may have travel and expenses covered to speak at a variety of industry events. Another example is consumer facing WalMart’s Mom and Dad blogger program (also briefed) where influencers that fit their ideal market are given a place to blog on the corporate website. They have very few limitations and often talk about the competition. These programs provide brands with a: trusted set of market influencers, a lower-cost program compared to traditional marketing efforts, and a platform to engage in dialog with their most knowledgeable market. Risks: Incorrectly Implemented, Advocacy Programs Will Cause Brand Backlash Innovation always requires risk, and many corporate cultures aren’t yet ready to yield control to the market. As a result, they apply command and control tactics to a group that could ultimately shoot them in the foot. Example? The “Target Rounders” program (I’ve not been briefed) encouraged customers to advocate the brand on public social networks, but unfortunately encouraged them to do so without transparency. The email sent from corporate to the members suggesting they advocate without disclosing their ties was quickly put on blogs –detracting from the whole movement. Also, companies not ready to take the bad with the good may not know what to do with the negative feedback, and may push back resulting in the program to crumble. Lastly, the members of the advocacy program themselves may be subjected to scrutiny from the community, they need to ensure they are inline with their own editorial guidelines. Checklist: Develop a Successful Advocacy Program Don’t build your relationships on a whim, have a plan, and build off the learnings of others. This checklist is the start of your program plan, share it with your internal teams before getting started. Get Internal Teams Prepared First . You can’t love your customers ’till you first love yourself. Companies that aren’t ready for the new world should tread lightly. Marketing, executives, legal, and the rest of the company need to be prepared for a new site of spokespersons to step forward in an unconventional way. Getting ready for the raw discussions that are already happening in your marketplace closer to your doors requires virtue, patience, and an open mind. Find Credible Advocates . This is not a shill program. Getting individuals that are already experts in your market to learn more about your company and talk about it in an open way requires a filter. Likely they have respected blogs, or thousands of followers on Twitter, or frequently attend and speak at industry events. Ensure The Advocacy Program Is Above Board . Make sure disclosure is loud and clear. Find advocates that are already vocal, maybe have sung your praises in public, and may already be a raving fan. Recognize them in public (online and off) give them a badge (maybe for blog, or even at events) that signify their distinction. Develop a policy, and enforce that any public mentions should require disclosure, involve your legal team. Ensure It Matches Up With Their Agenda. Advocates need to feel comfortable this is a topic or association they like. If they are not comfortable with this program they risk ruining their own credibility which will damage your own associations. Make sure they can say whatever they want to –but always give them the right to discuss it with the brand first as a right of first refusal. Never limit their access or privileges based upon what they do or don’t say. Incentivize Them With Special Access –But Don’t Pay Them . I’m a firm believer that your most passionate customers want to be recognized as experts, so thanking them, saluting them, and giving them access to information or events is key. Letting them demo products before others and providing an honest review is commonly done. Hand Over The Microphone –Give Them The Platform . This isn’t about you, it’s about them. The market doesn’t trust your brand, so let them have the platform to speak. Recognize them on your public website, develop a way to indicate that they’re the most trusted members in your online communities, and allow them to tell others. Intake Negative Feedback –But Be Actionable. You’ve now asked for open dialog for them to discuss with their community, but be prepared to intake their experience and thoughts with your marketing and more importantly: product and development teams. This can’t be just lip-service by corporate communications, but their input must be acknowledged, and then reported back to them it was taken into account. Use this as a way to reduce innovation costs –but ensure product teams correctly know how to develop these relationships. Provide Them With Communication Tools. Give them the opportunity to talk with each other. Develop an online community or email distribution list, just for them to participate in and talk with each other. Additionally, give them a platform on your corporate website or within your communities to vocalize. For those with advanced communities, give them higher level abilities than other members such as ability to moderate, add unique media, or personalize their experience. Define Success Based On Influence And Reduced Cost. This is an influence program, much like media, press, or analyst relations. Measure based on influence by looking at KPIs around number of touch points, impact (anecdotal and through surveys). Also, measure how much and how useful the feedback to product and development teams was taken used –divide by traditional ways of getting similar feedback. Measure cost savings: offset the measurement with the denominator of lower costs of a WOM program to develop a measurement based on value. Got An Idea? Leave a Comment. Whew, that’s my list, however the real knowledge is with the community. Love to hear your thoughts. What are key steps companies must take to have a successful advocacy program? Here’s a chance for agencies, brand managers, and anyone who’s got first hand knowledge to share what they’ve learned. Advocacy programs are a mainstay of today and future marketing programs –yet to be successful companies must have the mindset of being enablers –not controllers.
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Checklist: Develop a Successful Advocacy Program