Excuse me while I vent…

So while this post has no direct correlation to Internet marketing, I suppose there’s a small lesson in web based customer support and what NOT to do as an organization.

High definition webcams are on store shelves everywhere these days, and like all technologies, they’re getting cheaper as time passes us by. After planning a road trip (check out the 1000 km route) for the May long weekend, I figured I’d geek out and record the entire journey on video. I went and picked up the Microsoft LifeCam HD 5000 shown in the photo here – I prefer Logitech peripherals but there were no comparable HD cams for the same $50 price point, so I broke my own personal law and bought Microsoft over Logitech – woops. I installed the webcam on my laptop, set up a power mode so I could close the laptop lid without shutting the laptop down, put the laptop on the back seat, dropped the webcam on the dash and set out for Golden, British Columbia, the first stop on the road trip.

Short videos and photos worked perfectly, but after the 1 hour mark, or 1 gigabyte file size point (not recording full HD at this point, just 640×360), the software the Microsoft webcam comes with would crash when clicking on the “stop recording” button. Furthermore, the audio would cut out after the 10 minute mark. Considering the webcam works flawlessly with short video and the HD video looks great, I figured I’d give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt instead of returning the webcam. After digging around in their website I finally found a way to submit a form explaining my issues. I take 15 minutes to explain the issues and fill out the required information, hit submit and what do I get?

I’m no longer giving Microsoft the benefit of the doubt. I figured I would save myself the hassle of returning the webcam by waiting for Microsoft to release an update for their webcam software if they acknowledged they were aware of the issues and expected a fix to come out soon. But if Microsoft can’t even run a web based support system without it breaking, I have no hope that their webcam software will be able to record long videos successfully anytime soon. I’ve already wasted 15 minutes finding a form and filling it out, and technically, 14 hours of video recording time with no audio. I’m not going to call 1-800-Microsoft and sit on hold while they transfer me around to the correct department. I would tell you I’m going to go out and pick up a Logitech HD Webcam, but it sounds if their software is having more issues than Microsoft’s.

I guess my HD recorded road trip dreams are going to have to sit on hold until someone figures this out. The up side to all of this is I did record some great video of the Rockies, and even have brief footage of a wolf! You never know what you’re going to see on a 1000 km trip, and it’s nice to have the memories in video. Digital cameras are great, but sometimes they’re just not quick enough, and you’re not going to find an HD video camera for $50!

Quick Tips for Facebook Advertising

Facebook is a great advertising tool for a number of reasons. Regardless of the controversy surrounding how Facebook plans to use the personal information the social network collects, it’s still used by millions and millions of people around the world. At the end of the day, the ease of setting up a campaign and the targeting options available make Facebook a great place to advertise online.

• Don’t trust the estimated cost per click rate until your campaign is live – it’s almost always higher than advertised. Some will say that your new ad entering the marketplace forces the cost per click rates up, which is true to a degree, but I’m consistently seeing cost per click price increases of more than 20%. Make sure you factor this in to you campaign expectations.
• You don’t have to accept the cost per click you’re being charged – a little trick that works for me from time to time is to change your targeting ever so slightly. For example, instead of targeting people 40+ years of age, target people 39+ years of age. I’ve personally seen cost per click rates drop 10 cents by using that exact technique.
• Create as many ad variations as you can think of, and then create some more! Facebook advertising is half advertising, half market research. Create different ads for different products, use a variety of photos and think outside the box! You never know what you might learn, and the most successful ads may not be what you would expect.
• As a follow up to the last point, use what you learn with Facebook advertising in other marketing efforts. Or even use Facebook to research a specific demographic if you’re looking at a bigger advertising buy elsewhere. What type of message/imagery should you use in that new magazine that reaches a demographic of 45+ green thumbs? Why not target the same general audience with Facebook and run 10 ads with different flower imagery, different headlines, different angles to your pitch. It may not be a completely perfect comparison, but it’s far better than guessing!

I can’t give away free tactics without following it up with my own sales pitch, so my 5th tip is simply send me an email and I’ll take care of everything for you!

The death of a marketing cliche

Here it comes:

Half of my advertising works, I just don’t know which half!

I’ve heard it used as a joke and I’ve heard it used in a completely serious manner – I’m just happy I focus primarily on Internet marketing. Here’s why this phrase is dead to me:

• With $1,000 you employ me to launch a Facebook campaign for your brand which directs visitors to your website where you sell [insert product here]. For the sake of this article, I’ll use handmade chocolate gift packages which are sold through your website.
• Targeting just a single city, I segment your audience into groups. Males of three specific age ranges and females of three specific age ranges.
• 10 different ads are created for each segment – a total of 60 ads are launched for the campaign (60 may seem like a lot – more on that later)
• After the campaign is live, I review the statistics and learn:
  • Males age 24-30 don’t respond to ads with heart related pictures
  • Females 30-35 respond strongly to “catch your man off guard this valentines”
  • Males & females both seem to like the “surprise that special someone this Valentine’s” message

So at this point we have a leg up on print and other traditional means of advertising. We were able to run 60 ads simultaneously targeting specific demographics, but it doesn’t stop there – now the visitor is on your website:

• You have 4 packages ready for sale, each at different price points:
  • A variety of chocolates plus a teddy bear
  • Heart shaped chocolates with chocolate body paint (my favorite)
  • Dark chocolate package (the healthy choice)
  • The highest of high end product for those chocolate aficionados out there
• With proper tracking, you can learn which of the above groups are most likely to purchase the teddy bear package versus the heart shaped package.

So in the end we’ve learned that 25-30 year old males have a tendency to opt for the teddy bear package, while the females aged 35-40 spring for the dark chocolate package. These are purely speculative results, I don’t have any clients in the chocolate business.

So we’ve proven this cliche wrong and more. At the Facebook Ad level we’ve learned which advertisements grab our audiences attention – yes we had to create 60 ads instead of one or two print ads but it was well worth it. Then we’ve also followed the visitor from Facebook along with his or her information straight through the purchase phase. We’ve learned what messages work, what imagery works, and what demographics are interested in which products. This is part advertising, part market research – pass this information on to your sales representatives to help them suggest the right products on the floor. There’s a legitimate reason to double the advertising budget you had in mind!

I have one critically important addition to this fabricated campaign – let them sign up for your email newsletter after they’ve made the purchase! Let them tell you special dates so you can send email reminders in time for their anniversary. They’ve taken the time to make a purchase, now grab a quick chunk of information from them so you can generate future sales.

Graphic Design Crowdsourcing

I was reading the local newspaper the other day and discovered a local start-up website called DesignTourney.com. While this is probably the first time a local newspaper article inspired a blog post for me, it reminded me about something I often bring up while working with clients looking for certain design work.

The process is fairly simple. For example, if you need business cards or a logo you simply fill out a form to post your project. You come up with a prize ($250 cash will do) and you post your project with whatever specific requirements you might have. The design community will then submit their creations and the owner can then choose the preferred design, awarding that designer the $250 cash. With this process, DesignTourney.com has entered the world of crowd-sourced graphic design which already has big players like crowdspring.com and 99designs.com.

I see crowd-sourced graphics as both good and bad for the graphic design industry. If you operate a small business and you need a logo, stationary or website, crowd-sourced graphic design is a great option. You’ll be able to set a fixed budget and hopefully you will receive a number of designs to choose from. It’s a serious contender if you’re looking for a quick, appealing design within a strict budget. However, there is a very legitimate reason why crowd-sourced graphic design won’t be turning the entire graphic design industry on it’s head. Chances are you’re looking for design work because you’re not a designer yourself – as soon as you enlist the creative abilities of a crowd you loose the knowledge and experience a design agency brings to the table. You might receive 60 different logo variations and fall in love with one, opting to use that logo for your new business or for your re-branding effort, but there’s no professional advice from an experienced agency helping you see that just because you like a certain design doesn’t mean it’s the right fit for your company. There’s no way to place a finite value on experience and knowledge within a field – but when it comes to your brand you want to be careful and make sure you can live with the decision you make for quite some time to come.

My opinion on crowd-sourced graphic design is let the crowds do the fun stuff – perhaps it’s a postcard for your clients on a holiday, or a new version of your business card. Just leave the brand sensitive stuff to the professionals that pull from years of experience. If you’re looking for that experience locally here in Kelowna, I’m consistently impressed by Touchpoint Agency – someone to consider!

As for DesignTourney.com, they have their work cut out for them. I haven’t had a chance to meet the founders to learn about their goals, but the success of their website relies on the crowd itself. In this case, the crowd is graphic designers that already use CrowdSpring and 99Designs to generate some extra income. And with brands like LG and Nissan using CrowdSpring, DesignTourney is going to have to host some decent projects to gain the same momentum the other players already have. Personally, if DesignTourney was my project, I’d play the regional card. Running a small business myself, I prefer supporting local talent and if I’m going to award a random graphic designer $250 – $5000 for a graphic design project, I’d like to keep that local, or at least within the country.

Online advertising ingenuity

Electronic Arts is releasing a new game called Dante’s Inferno and an ad agency commissioned to promote the game came up with a very unique campaign. The agency, Wieden-Kennedy, starting off with a fairly traditional move – they bought banner ads on six different video game websites. The ingenuity came into play when Wieden-Kennedy communicated a rather strange request to the six gaming websites. These six gaming websites were to include text based art in the source code of their websites – something that wouldn’t be visible on the website itself, but instead would only be seen if someone looked at the actual source code of the website. In this text based art, or ASCII art, a URL was hidden along with a password. Each of the six websites had a different password. When you visited the secret URL you were asked to enter all 6 passwords which would then let you in to the website to download exclusive, pre-release content.

The campaign ran for nearly two weeks and generated 26,000 visits to the ‘secret’ website. While the typical person really has no reason to look at the source code of a website, Wieden-Kennedy was betting that the audience interested in Dante’s Inferno would not only know how to find the hidden messages, but that the concept alone would give the campaign more legs than the standard banner ads would have. And they were right, because here I sit as an online marketing consultant with relatively no interest in the game, admiring the creative of the online marketing campaign.

Kudos to Wieden-Kennedy!