From a client standpoint: We need to hit X volume of target and we should spend all our marketing budget into online.

From a media standpoint: Let us put all the money into performance networks and it will self optimises itself to generate the conversion required.

From the creative standpoint: Let’s do some creative testing, messaging and identify which message is more effective in converting.

I believe there got to be a changed in mentality of how digital marketing is executed. If I am the marketing head, I will be trying to gain more clarity and visibility in my marketing activities such as:

1) If I’m spending $150,000 in online marketing, I would be keen to know the reach and frequency of my campaign. Ultimately also correlate the media activities with my on site activity and identify if all the traffic that has been delivered from paid media is effective and ask (am i driving too much traffic to the site), (are traffic to my site resulting in high bounce rate)

There are so much insights when we start piecing data points together.

In short, see below my conclusion of why data is important.

I got the job through Will Scully Power who has then left the company a few months later to run a software solution company providing marketing automation – Marketo http://willscullypower.wordpress.com/

The experience working 1-to-1 with him has taught me much on how to grow a business and how to be more independent. The whole entry to Mark, in their data department has closed the gap between my “media agency experience” and “Online testing and optimisation”. The skill set that I’ve been acquiring has helped me to see data in a single view and draw actionable insights from it.

Data no longer needs to be sitting in silos. Data is the new currency and there are many big brands that are still slow to adapt and see the importance to be a data driven business. I hope to be sharing more in the upcoming months.

Tweet Sentiment Analysis

http://www.twitgraph.com/

http://tweetstats.com/

http://www.tweetvolume.com/

http://trendistic.com/

http://www.whostalkin.com

http://www.socialmention.com

http://www.trendpedia.com

http://www.twittrratr.com

http://www.trackur.com

http://www.xefer.com

http://www.blogpulse.com

http://www.samepoint.com

http://www.trendrr.com/

http://twist.flaptor.com/

http://www.kartoo.com/

http://www.twitalyzer.com/

http://www.postrank.com/

http://www.videosurf.com/

Free Trial:

http://www.techrigy.com

Anyway some learning that I find from blogging:

1)    If you’re blogging for a living: Keywords research is important, metadata in your blog, post is also important because one day when I started doing it, my site traffic increased by 5 times.

2)    Nobody likes to read Long CONTENT

3)    Nobody likes to read an aimless content

4)    Simplicity and an insightful post is a good post

5)    For those who are writing for attention or earning from Adsense: You may want to consider seeding your content using : Friendfeed, Twitter and etc

6)    If you commit to start a blog, make a point to maintain it. I am a bad example but not because I am not willing to spend the time but I’m having difficulty finding the right stuff to blog about.

Most people in the advertising industry just got caught up in talking about ROI but no one actually knows what they really mean : -

Value of investment – $X amount of dollars spent = value of the product and service you’re receiving

Return of Investment – $x amount of dollars spend=  to generate revenue

In this tough times, marketing guys needs to be smart enough to squeeze and get most of their value of investment which in the end leads to revenue generation

1) Investing in advertising – Everything is measurable whether you agree or not

- Define the metrics for success, forecast and go for it (This is very much relevant for Offline Advertising)

2) Online advertising – Feasible and accountable channel ( Always find a way to integrate offline advertising to online advertising)

- A 15 second TVC in Sydney – Can be measured by how many IP address belongs to Sydney households (Available in Google Analytics)

- A print ad on Sydney Morning Herald, using a unique click through URL – Can be measured by the amount of traffic that leads to a sales conversion in your site analytic (Available in Google Analytics)

- A tactical campaign which involves a strong call to action such as dialing a number – Can be measured

3) Should I get an agency to the work or should I do it myself?

- The call is yours but make sure you get them accountable by every single dollars you’re spending!

- Are you getting yourself a good deal – The numbers might be looking pretty and great (it could be wrong!!!). Only way to define success is – Does it generate me any revenue – If it doesn’t then why do it!

4) I spend a lot of money with my media agency but my Web Analytic doesn’t reflect the amount of traffic I should be getting!

- Time to really question what is the value of hiring them as your consultants

- Evaluate their services

- Are they making you a smarter marketer or are they just fooling you around?

In order to protect your company from throwing money everywhere, time to really sit down and have smart measurable achievable objective which leads back to generating revenues. No revenue, no pay check – You’re fired!

While doing some research, I came across this site:

The future of online video in Asia

http://blog.mike-walsh.com/2009/02/futuretube-online-video-in-asia.html

I’ve attended one of the Casbaa thingy back a few years ago and it is very insightful and worth your time to take a look.

Top 5 Key Take Away from this article:

1) The shift of media consumption

-How consumers discover, consume and interact with content.

Here are a few of the insights from the report: (Cut & Paste directly from Mike Walsh Blog)

1. The Internet has become a primary entertainment destination.
For young Asian consumers, the Internet is entertainment – particularly in China. A survey by the China Youth Daily and Sina in January 2008 indicated that more than 80% of young Chinese placed the Web as their primary source of entertainment compared to TV, at 66%.

2. Social discovery drives the popularity of content rather than traditional programming or marketing campaigns.
When it comes to the discovery of content – blogs, referrals through instant messaging clients, BBS boards, and top ten lists on video sharing sites have the most influence. In China, according to the CNNIC 63.7%, of video content is discovered through social connections, 94.1% of this sharing taking pace instant message tools such as QQ and MSN.

3. Long form professional content is the most popular format
Although the West is just now getting a taste of long form video on the web, in Asia it has been the most popular format for a while. 86.3% of the online video watched by Chinese netizens is either studio created films or TV shows. In Korea, 47% of users had illegally downloaded at least 55 movies a year, or more than one a week.

4. Audiences actively participate in content experiences
In Japan, the most popular video sharing site is Nico Nico Douga (Smiley Smiley Video) attracts almost a billion page views a month. The most distinctive feature of the site is an on-screen commenting function, where user messages scroll as commentaries across the video while playing like a form of visual karaoke.

5. Consumption is communal
Asian teenagers enjoy being online together. China has about 113,000 licensed Cyber Cafes, with many more operating illegally while in Korea, despite strong home broadband connections, most youth prefer to socialise in one of the 26,000 PC Baangs.

6. User anonymity is important
One of the major differences between Western and Eastern online users is the importance of privacy and anonymity. Most Japanese online users prefer to use imaginary names and cartoon avatars rather than photos to represent themselves while in China, much of the attraction of bulletin board systems is the ability to post comments without revealing your actual identity. YouTube in Japan after attempting to encourage greater amounts of user generated content is now focused on the more culturally acceptable practice of uploading cute pet videos.

7. Local brands dominate the online video landscape
For both cultural and technical reasons, local video sharing sites in Asia have generally been more successful than foreign players such as YouTube. In Japan, Nico Nico Douga is very popular, in Korea the dominant site is PandoraTV while in China, the top two sites are Youku and Todou.

Check out the video here: -

Quite a nice visual by http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/75950

Just came across this few points made by Social Media Today. Very valid points. Should have a read on it when you guys have time.

In my view on designing a social media roadmap. I will take the following approach.

1. Assess

- Your brand’s lifecycle

2. Identify

- Opportunity to use social media for your brand

3. Objective

- What do you want to use social media for?

4. Solutions

- Where is your core target audience? Niche reach or broad reach?

- Specific or general approach?

5. Metrics

- What is success and how do you measure it?

- Return on influence

- Return on investment (Yes, there is a return on investment in social media, if there isn’t why do you do it?. I’ve been seeing a lot of posts these days that says there is no return on investment and there is no key metrics to identify it. Of course there isn’t and is your job to find out how to do it if you’re a social media freak). Whatever you are doing ONLINE. IT IS MEASURABLE!

6. Cost-benefit analysis

- Does it worth the time you doing it VS the benefit you’re getting.

7. Exit strategy

- Dont even think about it. If you have a portal on the web, that is your company. Start having a team and build your business on it, build your relationship on it, build your community on it. Start bridging the gap between your offline operation and online operation.

Start integrating and leverage the online media because it is cost efficient and it is measurable and it generates high leads which also contribute to your customer database.

Most of the brands especially in the US that have use twitter as part of their marketing communication channels have experience ups and down from it.

For the use of twitter in business, there is a need to develop an objective for twitter and a strategy to use twitter as PR tool for your brand.

- What are the strategies you would develop to counter negative tweets about your brands? Yes, your brand are having the presence in the social media area but is it impacting conversation and changing perception? That’s a question for you to answer. If it doesn’t – Why not and how can you fix this?

- What strategies should I adopt to recruit my followers? Frankly speaking, what I’ve been seeing happening quite a lot is that I get lots of strangers following me – Which is fine because I know they want something from me which is my valuable inputs on social media.

Here is the question: – What valuable insights or inputs could your brand provide to your followers? Do you follow people or let people follow you? (Push or Pull Strategy) & How do you measure success from twitter?

- How can you integrate twitter with your offline events? To see a campaign that has twitter integrated as part of the communication model is quite powerful!

Keeping this short and simple. Think about it before executing your strategies and for consumers who just love to tweets, make sure you follow people that you can are benefitting fromthe follow. For those who are continuously being stalked by competitors rather than followers. The best way to stop this is to block them!