RACING FOR SPONSORS: Will Short-term And Shared Deals Be The Death Of Sponsorship?

In the beginning, stadium naming rights agreements were largely 20-year commitments, with a few 10-year exceptions. The bulk of NASCAR team sponsorships were for a full season, and marketers signed on to sponsor every stop of a concert tour.  Today, we have Snapdragon Stadium—a 10-day naming rights agreement—race teams selling car sponsorship in five-race increments, and sponsors cherry-picking concert markets.  There are many reasons, from financial to promotional, why this fragmentation would seem to make sense for both properties and sponsors. For sponsors, their cash commitment is lower and flexibility higher. If corporate partners are only interested in such piecemeal deals, then properties are forced to deliver them if they want any revenue at all.  But this short-term thinking on the part of sponsors threatens to damage the entire sponsorship industry. Marketers are missing the point entirely that sponsorship is not a get-in, get-out medium. Treating sponsorship investments like spot TV buys will not work. www.sponsorship.com/About-IEG/Sponsorship-Blogs/Jim-Andrews/January-2012/Will-Short-term-And-Shared-Deals-Be-The-Death-Of-S.aspx

TELEVISION: Measuring TV Exposure Does Not Capture Sponsorship ROI

There is much more to measuring the ROI of a sponsorship than accounting for the value of brand exposure during TV broadcasts, yet I continue to hear stories of sponsors that put nearly all of their measurement emphasis on that.  Here’s an example: A representative for Europecar, a Paris-based rental car company that is the title sponsor of a French cycling team, said in a Wall Street Journal article after the team competed in the Tour de France that the company was “calculating every second that our logo is seen on the screen” and “there is no doubt this Tour has paid for itself.”  Europecar paid an estimated $6 million for the cycling sponsorship. Even if they generated $30 million worth of advertising value during Tour de France broadcasts, does that mean they got a 5 to 1 ROI? No. All that means is the company’s logo was on the screen (along with dozens of other corporate logos) during the broadcasts. Did any of the TV viewers even notice the logos? Do they feel any better about Europcar because they sponsor the team? How much does the sponsorship influence their decision about which company they will use the next time they rent a car? These are all important questions that would need to be answered in order to truly determine ROI. http://www.sponsorship.com/About-IEG/Sponsorship-Blogs/Mark-Ording/December-2011/Measuring-TV-Exposure-Does-Not-Capture-Sponsorship.aspx

ENDURING THE DIRT: Baja 1000 TV Ratings From 12/11/11

I had forgotten that the World of Adventure Sports on NBC was going have its Baja 1000 segment this past Sunday.  Then I saw the thread on RDC complaining about the coverage and decided to go back and get the ratings for the program to see how it compares to prior shows.  The result?  Zzzzzzz...same old same old.  In truth, its no different than the ratings LOORRS is generating over on CBS for its broadcasts and not really different from prior World of Adventure Sports broadcasts.  The 0.5 rating equates to 0.5% of the 115.9 million TV households tuning into the broadcast.  With approximately 1.1 viewers per the 580,000 households that were tuned in, that means some 638,000 people viewed the brief 2011 Baja 1000 coverage.  '09's coverage of the B1K on NBC and within the World of Adventure Sports program generated a 0.7 rating and had approximately 900,000 viewers.  '10's World of Adventure Sports Baja 1000 program garnered only a 0.3 rating and about 382,000 viewers. http://nismostuff.blogspot.com/2011/12/baja-1000-tv-ratings-from-121111.html

LUCAS OIL OFF ROAD RACING TV: Wish I Had Better News... 

regarding the ratings from this past weekend's LOORRS race that was broadcast on CBS.The LOORRS race that ran in this exact same timeslot one year ago saw a 1.2 rating and 1.53 million viewers for the broadcast.  It marked a high point for short course TV viewership in recent memory.  Dirt Sport magazine lauded the result in a following issue and many thought that people across the country had finally caught on.Not so much.Since that watershed rating the LOORRS broadcasts have garnered a 0.5, 0.6, 0.5, 0.4, 0.3, and 0.3 ratings all prior to this past semi-holiday weekend.This weekend's LOORRS broadcast generated another 0.4 rating equating to 510,000 viewers of the program (you can see prior posts on this topic as to how I calculate this number).  Yes this is an uptick from the prior two broadcasts but I don't think anywhere near what was hoped for at the beginning of the year.  With the consistency that these numbers show I think its clear that last Thanksgiving's ratings were a fluke--either a mistake in the ratings calculation or a remarkable stroke of lighting on that day. http://nismostuff.blogspot.com/2011/11/wish-i-had-better-news.html

ANALYTICS OF ECOMMERCE: A Look Back at the 2011 Holiday Shopping Season

With 2011 behind us, I thought you might be interested in some observations regarding what the holiday shopping season told us about the state of the consumer economy.  comScore reported that e-commerce had a strong season, with sales for the period from Nov 1 through Dec 25 increasing by 15 percent over the corresponding days the year earlier. The National Retail Federation reported that it expects total sales to be up about 3.8 percent versus year ago, which falls short of the 5.2 percent growth recorded during the 2010 shopping season, but is still a respectable growth rate. Nonetheless, with a growth rate about 4x faster than total spending, it’s clear that consumers continue to be attracted to the convenience and lower prices offered by the Internet.  So, how should we interpret these data? Are we seeing an improvement in the U.S. consumer economy? The answers seem to be mixed.  One reason we’re seeing increased consumer spending may be because the personal savings rate — the percentage of after-tax income that is not spent — fell to 3.5% in November from 3.6% in October. As recently as June, households were saving about 5% of their earnings. And, until July, the savings rate had consistently been at 4.5% or higher since late 2009. The latest savings rate is still better than the housing bubble months of 2005-07, when it generally hovered between 1% and 2%. Even so, the recent drop in saving indicates that although consumers want to buy things they put off during the shaky recovery, they don't have the income growth to support a more robust ramp-up in purchase activity. http://blog.comscore.com/2012/01/2011_holiday_shopping_season.html

Optimizing a Page for Search Engines, Part 1: Keyword Research

In its purest form, optimizing content for search engines consists of modifying one page to send a strong keyword signal for one keyword or phrase. The amazing simplicity of this concept is often lost on marketers, many of whom think of content optimization like taking aspirin: If two is good then four must work even better. Sprinkling lots of keywords on the same page will not improve organic search rankings, nor will using the same keyword on lots of different pages. The key to content optimization for SEO is matching one keyword to one page in a methodical and disciplined manner. Scalable methods of optimization become necessary if the site is very large, but even the largest sites still "manually" optimize a selection of critical pages by matching one keyword to one page. Choosing the Best Keywords  Before keywords can be matched to pages, the optimizer must know which keywords to choose. Make a seed list of the words that will be used on the page. Think of as many synonyms as possible and record them in a Word doc or Excel spreadsheet. Be warned, these are not the keywords with which you’ll be optimizing. The brainstorming process is only the start of the keyword research process. Optimizing with a seed list will result in content optimized for the way you think and search, not the way your customers do.  http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3294-Optimizing-a-Page-for-Search-Engines-Part-1-Keyword-Research

Ten New Years Resolutions for Open Source eCommerce (OSC) Makers

I've been an evangelist for users of Open Source eCommerce (OSC) programs for almost a decade now, and for users of other OS programs since I worked at Netscape in the mid-90's. As a user evangelist, my job is to speak up for users when they cannot or will not.  I have watched the makers of these programs make the same mistakes over and over, starting out like a shooting star then plummeting to the ground.The line between OSC and commercial programs will be blurred this year like never before, and the OSC makers need to learn from the commercial guys or be wiped out.  "OSC makers" include programs like osCommerce, Zen Cart, VirtueMart, PrestaShop, Loaded Commerce, Magento, UberCart, OpenCart, TomatoCart, WP e-Commerce, eShop, Jigoshop, Cart66, WooCommerce and many, many more ready to move up in the OSC world. www.practicalecommerce.com/blogs/post/913-Ten-New-Years-Resolutions-for-Open-Source-eCommerce-OSC-Makers

• I resolve to get back to basics.
• I will make it easy for new users to love me.
• I resolve to be less condescending to potential customers.
• I will document, document, document.
• I resolve to have a kinder, gentler support forum this year.
• I promise to get organized this year.
• I will reduce wasted clicks.
• This year I swear to stop the bloat!
• This year I will be more predictable.
• I will delight my real customers.

BRAND VISIONARY: 4 Ways to Tweet as a Visual Brand

Companies that rely on a visual or photographic web presence often find it difficult to convey their media on Twitter. Take, for instance, apparel brands that need to get social media eyes on their merchandise, or a design firm that seeks exposure. How can these types of businesses ensure that Twitter followers see their wares? E-commerce or design companies may prefer Facebook, due to its inherently visual and expansive nature. However, businesses these days can’t afford to bypass Twitter entirely -- especially because many people keep their Twitter feeds open all day long.Read on to discover four pillars of “visual tweeting,” or how to make sure that your Twitter followers get the picture. www.openforum.com/articles/4-ways-to-tweet-as-a-visual-brand

1. Twitter voice should be consistent and relevant
2. Favor native images
   
3. Pageviews are paramount
4. Backgrounds Still Matter

Create a Customer Loyalty Plan

You’ve won another customer! That’s awesome, and you have every reason to be excited. You’ll go to great lengths to make sure they are happy. After all, you care about each and every one of your customers.But what’s next? After this sale, how do you plan to keep them coming back again and again as a loyal customer? You need a customer loyalty plan.Having a great product and giving wonderful service at the time of purchase is a great start. But if you are going to build long term loyalty in a large number of your customers, there are a few things you can do to spur that along. http://blog.batchblue.com/create-a-customer-loyalty-plan/

CONTENT MARKETING: 10 Reasons Why “Liquid” Content Should be Included in Your Social Media Marketing

If you want to get serious about marketing for your business or organisation the foundation of any focused effort is creating unique and inspiring content to publish and promote that educates, informs and entertains.Content in fact should do much more than that if you are to succeed fast, far and large, at marketing your business and organisation.10 Reasons Why Liquid Content Should be Included in Your Social Media MarketingThe ”ultimate marketing goal” is to make content or ” ideas” so contagious that they cannot be controlled, this is “liquid content” http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/10-reasons-why-liquid-content-should-be-included-in-your-social-media-marketing-0116357

MULTI-MEDIA ADVERTISING PORTAL: Google TV Ads: New year, new partner and new technology

Since launching in 2007, Google TV Ads has provided advertisers a smart, measurable way to run national TV campaigns, while at the same time helping our partners (including networks, cable and satellite operators) work towards maximizing revenue from their inventory.  Over the past year, we’ve seen a 6-fold increase in the number of ads aired per day as our household reach across cable and satellite operators has tripled.  Today we’re pleased to continue this momentum, to help both advertisers and partners get the most from TV advertising.  New Partner - Welcome Cox Media  Cox Media, the advertising division of Cox Communications, the third largest cable operator in the US with more than 6 million total customers, has entered into a strategic partnership with Google TV Ads, adding their inventory to our national TV buying network.  Cox becomes the first major cable industry partner to deploy Google’s next-generation advertising management solution, a major update to the TV Ads platform.  As a result of this partnership, advertisers who use Google TV Ads will have access to inventory on over 75 networks across Cox’s channel line up.  Cox Media is available in many cities across the country.  Building upon previously announced inventory deals with DIRECTV, Verizon FiOS, and Viamedia, Google TV Ads has nearly tripled its operator household reach since the start of 2011, to a total of 42 million households nationwide.

As the TV landscape has evolved from a few to hundreds of networks, audience attention has fragmented, making the process of reaching one large audience more challenging.  At the same time, TV ad inventory is split between a number of players - national networks, regional affiliates, cable, and satellite operators. As a result, each has its own slices of inventory to sell - divided across many shows, in disparate regions, on lots of channels, at various times of the day. On its own, each slice may not have a large number of viewers, or enable a major advertiser to reach a nationwide audience.  And it’s time consuming to buy and sell each slice individually. http://adwordsagency.blogspot.com/2012/01/google-tv-ads-new-year-new-partner-and.html

6 Strategies Small Businesses Should Adopt To Steal Customers From Big Brands

More often than not, small businesses re-found facing the pressure of the dire need to perform well so as to compete with the large and well established businesses and brands. Since small businesses do not have hat big a budget or wider reach in the market, it gets a lot more difficult for them to compete and at the same time focus on the growth of the business. However, there is much to achieve even if you have a small business. A small business has its own specialties with which the large business houses can not compete. It is very much possible for a small business to attract customers by simply focusing on the many plus points that come with being small. www.invoicera.com/blog/business/6-strategies-small-businesses-should-adopt-to-steal-customers-from-big-brands

1. Focus on Your ‘Simplicity’
2. Plan Strategies to Outmaneuver the Big Brands
3. Solve Users’ Problems
4. Be Fearless
5. Ensure that You Provide Excellent Customer Service
6. Work on Becoming a Big Brand

This type of strategy would make for an interesting discussion worthy of a live interactive webcast business form.

BUSINESS IS PERSONAL: The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives

Sydney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, published “Why Smart Executives Fail” 8 years ago.In it, he shared some of his research on what over 50 former high-flying companies – like Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Rubbermaid, and Schwinn – did to become complete failures.  It turns out that the senior executives at the companies all had 7 Habits in common.  Finkelstein calls them the Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives.These traits can be found in the leaders of current failures like Research In Motion (RIMM), but they should be early-warning signs (cautionary tales) to currently unbeatable firms like Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), and Amazon.com (AMZN).  Here are the habits, as Finkelstein described in a 2004 article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/01/02/the-seven-habits-of-spectacularly-unsuccessful-executives/

• Habit # 1:  They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment
• Habit #2:  They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests
• Habit #3:  They think they have all the answers
• Habit #4:  They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them
• Habit #5: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image
• Habit #6: They underestimate obstacles
• Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past

These habits offer some clarity in the calamity of running a business.

2012 in Social Media: The Next Generation of Social Marketing

Summing up social marketing in 2011 and making predictions for the coming year is a daunting task! 2011 saw more industry growth than any other year; we saw the widespread acceptance of social marketing for B2B companies, and we witnessed moments that are likely to echo beyond 2011: the debut of Google+, the introduction of Facebook Timelines, and an amusing concession to social media silliness by the White House, via the now infamous rickroll. * This post was originally published in the Huffington Post. On the local front, we asked our Account Strategists about their observations of trends over the year. Our team of strategists works every day with the biggest brands in the world, hands-on in helping to craft and maintain the strongest social marketing strategies on the web. Our marketing strategists noted a dramatic rise in clients’ needs to set specific marketing objectives for each social campaign. Objectives fell into three key areas: http://blog.wildfireapp.com/2012/01/13/2012-in-social-media-the-next-generation-of-social-marketing/

1. Growth of the brand presence (fans, likes, follows, and subscriptions)
2. Engagement of the brand audience (comments, shares, and user generated content)
3. Monetization of fans (qualified leads, or sales driven from social pages)

SOCIAL SEARCH ENGINE EVOLVED: Google Merges Search and Google+ Into Social Media Juggernaut

Now we know Google’s master-plan for integrating Google+ ever more deeply into the Google ecosystem: Pour the whole thing into Google search. Starting today, Google+ members, and to a lesser extent others who are signed into Google, will be able to search against both the broader web and their own Google+ social graph. That’s right; Google+ circles, photos, posts and more will be integrated into search in ways other social platforms can only dream about. http://mashable.com/2012/01/10/google-launches-social-search/

This evolution of search and moreover social search has yet again landed in Google's hand.

SOCIAL SEARCH INSIGHT: How Google’s Social Search Shift Will Impact Your Brand’s SEO

In what could be hailed as the update that sparked an all-out Internet riot, Google has launched “Search, plus your World,” which pours personal social results into your public search listings. The catch is that it only factors in your Google+ social graph, leaving Facebook and Twitter, arguably the more active social networks, out in the cold. This could prove to be an even bigger search engine development than Google’s infamous Panda update, which aimed to remove sites with low-quality content. Why? Because it’s easier to write good content (or at least, hire someone to write good content) than it is to get people to share your content. http://mashable.com/2012/01/13/google-search-plus-your-world-seo/

With the introduction of social search or socially-filtered search, results will be heavily influenced by social circles (Google Plus Circles) over that of conventional organic search, thereby reducing an individual's global scope and perception of the visible world when peering the World Wide Web's sphere. This will deliver greater leverage to a person's social sphere. And for retailers as well as other brands looking to land itself into the hearts of these individuals, breaking into the walls of crowd sourced loyalty may very well become a more difficult task. As SEO consultant John Doherty says, this doesn’t mean that local SEO isn’t as important as we originally thought: It means that you need to be relevant, well-found, and well-liked (or at least, well-shared) by influencers. And as the blog post further states, if guest blogging is within your SEO strategy, you must ensure the rel="author" tag is used and is linked back to your Google Plus profile so as to garner greater clout and authority from the Google, the world's most influential search engine and perhaps the world's most ifluential Social Search Engine. So, get your Social Search Engine Optimization game on.

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY: The Top 10 News Organizations With the Most Google+ Engagement

A list published Tuesday reveals which news organizations on Google+ instigate the most reactions from their followers. Since Google+ brand pages launched in November, media outlets have been playing around with how to best use the 6-month-old social network.Based on +1s, comments and shares, The New York Times, Mashable and The Next Web appear to be finding the most success at roping in heavy engagement (see the top 10 and statistics in the gallery above). http://mashable.com/2012/01/10/news-organizations-google-plus-engagement/

Check this post out for more info and follow up on the link to the Google Plus Guide.

BUSINESS STRATEGY: Seven Mistakes Promising Companies Make

 If they’re being honest, most accomplished entrepreneurs and professionals will say they learned more from their failures than from their triumphs. Failure doesn’t taste as sweet, but for those who survive it, the spoils are sweeter in the end.  The challenge is getting people who have valuable experience and who take risks to come clean about their mistakes—in public, for all to see. 21 images Photos: Top 20 Americas Most Promising Companies 11 images It never hurts to ask, so we posed the question to members of the Forbes list of America’s Most Promising Companies. These 100 up-and-comers—identified with the help of CB Insights, a Manhattan-based research firm that tracks investment in high-growth private companies—have serious growth potential for a host of reasons. But as with any young small business, their fortunes can change very quickly. Being nimble enough to thrive demands learning from mistakes, shaking off the pain, and moving on. www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2012/01/13/seven-mistakes-promising-companies-make/

• Not Having Enough Growth Capital
• Thinking “I” And “The Company” Were The Same
• Underestimating Market Perception
• Thinking Too Small
• Being Overly Optimistic
• Scaling Up Too Fast
• Hiring Our Own Sales Team

BUSINESS METHODOLOGY: Crowdfunding Bill Stuck in the Senate

In early November, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelming passed the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act, a crowdfunding bill which permits startups to offer and sell securities via crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter or social networking sites like Facebook.  As I discuss below, this is a game-changer for startups and lifts certain securities law prohibitions that have been on the books since the 1930’s.  The Obama Administration supports the House bill and noted in its Statement of Administrative Policy that: “This bill will make it easier for entrepreneurs to raise capital and create jobs.”  Unfortunately, two very different crowdfunding bills have been introduced in the U.S. Senate, and committee hearings have been surprisingly focused on fraud concerns and other potential problems.  Indeed, it is unclear whether the Senate will even pass a crowdfunding bill (and, if so, in what form). http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottedwardwalker/2012/01/13/crowdfunding-bill-stuck-in-the-senate/

Fusion of social media methodology for developing source code and business funding.

SOCIAL SALES: How To Use Social Media To Make Sales

An integral part of the sales process is getting to know your prospects and establishing relationships—and it turns out that social media can help you accomplish this quickly and easily.  “Social media allows salespeople to see what prospects are saying and what others are saying about them,” says Janet Fouts, a social media coach and chief executive of Tatu Digital Media, an online marketing agency. “You can really get to know a prospect and his or her needs this way. Social media is a great way to research a prospect and initiate a sale, if you use it right.”  Jennifer Fong, a direct sales social media expert, says, “Not only can it help you generate new leads, but it allows you to build deeper relationships with existing clients that drives them to purchase again and again.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/01/13/how-to-use-social-media-to-make-sales/

STARTUP EMPLOYMENT: Get A Job Startwire

Never feel in the dark again!      Daily updates on your job applications from 5,486 employers via email and text message.     Stay organized.      All your applications in one spot. Track your progress and activity.     Recommendations that get you hired faster.      Find hidden insider connections & get great job search advice to accelerate your job search.Track your applications by forwarding your confirmation email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it 1 2 ... or use our Track a New Application button Get automatic updates on your job applications from thousands of employers. 3 4 Find insider connections who can move your application to the top of the line. 5-new Get targeted recommendations based on your application activity, who you know, and your profile. http://www.startwire.com/

LIVE & INTERACTIVE: Soon Your TV Will Watch You, Too

Front-facing cameras are everywhere on laptops, tablets and phones. If the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was any indication, they're about to become ubiquitous on TVs as well.  New TVs from Samsung and Lenovo used the show to introduce TVs that recognize you and others in the room, automatically logging you into Facebook and pulling up your favorite channels or websites. Lenovo's TV lets you use the camera as an ID service that blocks access to certain content or channels if a child is in the room.  For Samsung's 7500 and 8000 series TVs, all you have to do is say "Hi, TV," when you walk into a room for the TV to turn on and know who's there.  As one can imagine, this is all very exciting to the world's biggest advertisers, many of whom saw these new applications for the first time this week when they toured the show floor. These are the execs who spend billions on TV advertising but really don't know who's in the room when their ads air -- or whether their intended audience is busy with a mobile phone or tablet anyway.  "Is anyone watching? This is why advertisers are so excited about front-facing cameras," Frank Barbieri, exec VP of emerging platforms at Yume, told a group of ad agency execs and clients during a tour. Yume powers advertising on smart TVs from Samsung and LG.  http://adage.com/article/special-report-ces/tv-watch/232094/