Looks like Geico is tring to create a new arm of their Caveman marketing campaigning, giving him more backstory, as well as promoting their partners with a new flash site: Caveman’s Crib.
The idea behind it is that you can explore the Caveman’s (named Joe Dyton) house right before he hosts a party. Exploring the site, I found an iPod with a few songs, and profiles for nine artists in the magazine (who also had music on the iPod):
- Royksopp
- Napoleon da Legend
- The Fabulous Entourage
- Â Arthur Loves Plastic
- Riding Paper Airplanes
- Rick Davies
- Corina Bartra
- Particle Zoo
- d-fuse and Hiratzka
As well as ads for Cairo Jeans, Philippe Frais (fake ad?), and Flory Company (also fake?). You’ll find an article on Joe Dyton starring in a new movie called “Smart Casual,” a TV with a Geico Gecko commercial, a computer with the Caveman’s intelligently pompous blogs. Heck, you can even voyeuristically pop into the bathroom and watch the caveman shower, help him get dressed in the bedroom, or read annotated versions of “War & Peace” and “Don Quixote.”
Notice anything about all of these activities? They’re boring as hell. Sorry Geico, you’ve been doing well, and you’ve put a a lot of work into this site, but for those of us that don’t already love the caveman, give us something more interactive than just reading.
April 25th, 2007
posted in Geico, Top, Marketing |
one comment
If you were given a last meal, what would you wash it down with? Would you choose Coke, Pepsi, or something completely different?
Obviously, it’s difficult to do a study of this nature as killing people in the course of research would be slightly unethical, and you’d have a tough time disposing of bodies (trust me - it’s not easy to make bodies disappear).
However, the state of Texas, in all its wisdom, posted on their state site the last meals of all the people executed from 1982 to 2003. This information is no longer available from their site, but it has been copied and can be found here.
The results?
Of the 301 inmates listed, 52 declined the last meal. Of the 249, 37 chose Coke as their final drink (14.8%). Only 3 chose Pepsi (1.2%). I’m impressed Coke has so much market pull, and a smart marketer would take advantage of this - either side can spin it favorable.
Coke: More people choose Coke as their final drink than Pepsi!
Pepsi: Death row killers are 10x more likely to drink Coke than Pepsi!
Of course, the entire ad would have to have sort of a parodied feel to it - something like this:
Quick photoshop job, but something along these lines would catch people’s attention. Incidentally, Dr. Pepper was served 13 of the 249 last meals (5.2 %), beating out Pepsi, despite a much smaller market share. Dr. Pepper is made by DPSU, Inc (Dr. Pepper / Seven Up). They can easily grab a share of this marketing and can go in either direction - especially if either one of these companies picked it up.
What’s the lesson? Coke has fantastic branding, and branding is powerful enough that it will even be on people’s minds in their last moments. Brand on!
April 6th, 2007
posted in Humor, Top, Marketing |
no comments
Huge post on Sugar Rae’s blog about link building strategies. 10 questions, answers from
Questions:
Question One: What are the factors you would take into
account before buying a link from a directly contacted site (not a link
broker or seller)?
Question Two: In sectors where links are particularly tough to come by (retail, B2B in boring industries, etc.), what are content tactics you’ve taken to appeal to relevant sites in those industries (specific examples would rock)?
Question Three: What is the current climate with paid links, and how can I navigate the paid links landscape so that I come out smelling like a rose on the other side?
Question Four: Automating the link acquisition process: How far do you recommend going with it? What are the benefits and pitfalls of automation?
Question Five: Name 5 specific techniques (queries, tools, process, or starting points) you would use to get links for a statewide real estate agent.
Question Six: What are the top 3 over-rated and under-rated criteria
for determining how valuable an individual link will potentially be to
your site’s search engine rankings?
Question Seven: If you were in control of the search engine algorithm at Google, what are the top three changes you would make specific to how Google values/counts links?
Question Eight: What’s the most common mistake you see people making in their link building activities?
Question Nine: How do you think that nofollow links and redirected links are treated by the various search engines and do you see any value in obtaining these types of links?
Question Ten: So many people complain about competitors who are ranking solely on reciprocal links. Do you believe reciprocal links still works as a complete strategy or do you believe age, trust and grandfathering (for lack of a better word) are taken into account? How important do you feel age is to a link?
March 14th, 2007
posted in Link Building, Marketing |
no comments
It appears Google is doing well with its cross-medium advertising.
AdAge claims that both publishers and advertisers have had good responses using the programs.
At The Seattle Times, the test has already produced six-figure incremental ad revenue, said Mike Lemke, the paper’s senior VP-sales and marketing. “After the test, we think that it’s a viable new channel that meets the specific needs of certain advertisers who probably would not otherwise give our products a try, just because they’re either out of market or they don’t tend to use newspapers.”
…
EHealth spent $100,000 on newspaper ads in 12 markets including Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Chicago. “We specifically designed the test so we could measure lift in website traffic,” Mr. Telkamp said. “We are very pleased with the results. We definitely felt that the platform made buying print media across a broad array of alternatives convenient. It was easy to enter, modify and place bids. Plus, we were able to upload our ads to the platform, so no additional work was required. The platform’s tracking tool was also very good.”
…
Eric Mastel, president of Max Media in Virginia Beach, Va., was a skeptic when he signed a deal two years ago with dMarc Broadcasting — a company Google bought in January 2006 for its automated radio-advertising platform. But after he tested the system in two small stations in North Carolina, it impressed him with its efficiency and, even better, by delivering ad rates triple that of the regular networks in the market.
Good words all around. Let’s see more.
March 12th, 2007
posted in Google Print Ads, Google Radio, Google, Marketing |
no comments
Valleywag recently voted Facebook as the worst advertising platform, consistently showing clickthrough rates of .04% or less. From personal experience as well, it’s also a terrible marketing tool for virabait.
Facebook is a great tool, but it’s not a great marketing tool. Sorry guys.
March 12th, 2007
posted in Facebook, Social Search, Marketing |
3 comments
Tamar of 10e20 wrote a really great summary of how to do paid search. It goes over common myths, questions, strategies, mistakes - anything and everything. It’s extremely comprehensive for a single article. Well done, and a great read!
Introduction
When considering paid search, it’s really important to set some goals. As you can tell, I’m very big on goal orientation. Some of these goals can be:
- Better targeting (keywords and position)
- Better messaging (ad copy/description and landing page)
- Lower cost/reduce waste
- Increase conversions
- Improve ROI
- Measure success
March 11th, 2007
posted in Paid Search, Featured Posts, Keyword Research, Marketing |
no comments
Google’s not going away for a long while as the top search. Why? It’s still got it. MSN, the #3 ranked engine, still doesn’t.
MSN recently filed a patent for removing duplicate search results, including removing organic results if the same page or site appears in the paid section. I have a feeling this is a “feature” that will never see the light of day because of how absolutely idiotic it is. I know why they’re doing this: the bottom line. It makes sense - if the organic listing is removed, people will be more likely to click on the paid listing, and M$ makes more money, right?
Wrong. Any decent search marketer with good, quality sites will immediately pull all money out of AdCenter because it’ll remove their natural ranking. And natural rankings are better because 1) they’re free and 2) they’re more trustworthy.
Once all these guys have pulled their money out, cost-per-click will drop drastically, meaning that the bottom for AdCenter earnings for publishers will drop out and they’ll be looking at a penny-per-click. Ouch. MS would, in one fell motion, blow the brains out of its entire ad operation.
On the other hand, Google just filed a patent for allowing people to remove pages from search results, and using this information to determine spam pages and affect ranking. That’s smart. Let the masses do the work of finding bad pages for you, and people have an incentive to do it.
When I run into a bad, spammy page, I don’t ever want to run into it again, so it would make sense spend the few extra seconds to remove it from my personalized search. Additionally, pages that deceive me in the search results would also earn my wrath. This new Google option would allow me to vent my anger by knocking the page out of my own listings, and putting a vote against it in the grand scale of the index.
Of course, there is the possibility of abuse, but I have faith that Google will have a stringent enough system in place to make it difficult, and have enough human fall-backs to catch the few cases that fall through the cracks.
Google: 1. MS: 0.
March 4th, 2007
posted in Top, Google Search, Windows Live, Google, Marketing |
no comments
Of course, credibility is an important thing in any business, and especially one where you’re trusted to provide good information. Digg has been having credibility issues for a while now with rumors of Diggers getting paid to Digg articles, and it just got smashed in the face with a battering ram.
Here was the experiment: Annalee Newitz decided she would try an experiment and write an article about it. She would create one of the worst blogs ever - it’s at http://www.crowdhacking.com/blog/, not even going to give it nofollowed-link-love.
And then she would hire a Digg promotion company to promote it. For $100, she hit the front page (and incidentally, came up with some of the best link-bait I’ve seen in a while). Here’s a quote from Adelson saying Digg can’t be gamed, but obviously this experiment proves that wrong:
If the corporate brass at Digg were right, this would be a complete waste of my money. CEO Jay Adelson told me before I conducted this experiment that all the groups trying to manipulate Digg “have failed,” and that Digg “can tell when there are paid users.” Adelson added, “When we identify a (Digg user) who is part of a scam, we don’t remove their account so they don’t realize they’ve been identified. Then we let them continue voting, but their votes may count a lot less. Then the scam doesn’t work.”
So what can we learn? Digg can be gamed. Gaming Digg can get you a lot of link love. More generally, uncovering hard fact that proves rumors gets you lots of link love.
March 1st, 2007
posted in Digg, Top, Marketing |
no comments
We all know that more expensive items tend to be of slightly higher quality, but people are also paying for the status symbol and exclusivity associated with it - Polo, Burberry, Rolls Royce, BMW, etc. But are they really worth the 2x, 3x, ?x markup over products of only slightly lesser quality?
What if there’s no status attached to it? Shoemoney recently made a post containing info from a book called Pinpoint Pricing. This snippet of info showed that an increase in price for an e-book from $19 to $29 (what’s the status in an e-book?) actually increased sales. It could have been an issue of perceived value, or it could have been an issue with the number itself (aren’t you sick of those $19.95 TV Ads?),
Or it could have been a reference point issue: “$19 - that’s like $10, but double!” vs “$29 - that’s like $50, but a lot less!”
Sounds ridiculous? It is. The fact is, humans often act completely irrationally. Take some examples:
Your offered the chance to bet $100, with a 50/50 chance you’ll lose that $100 or win another $100. Studies show most people will choose to risk-averse and not bet. Additionally, theories that suggest that winning $100 isn’t as valuable as losing it because it will create a proportionally smaller change in your current wealth.
You’re offered either $100 or a 50/50 chance to get $0 or $200. Studies show most people will choose to risk-averse and pick the solid $100.
You’re offered the chance to either lose $100 or a 50/50 chance to lose $0 or $200. Most people will actually choose to gamble, despite the fact that this goes against the previous theory (since the second $100 is actually a larger change to your current wealth), and if you reorganize the question slightly:
You lose $100. You are then given the option of winning it back or losing another $100. The results of this question are identical to the previous one, but people, if they were rational, would choose to not gamble again, since this scenario is the same as the first.
Or look at any lottery - if you have a 1/1000 chance of winning $500, and the ticket costs $1, the average return you can expect is $.50. And yet people play lotteries all the time (some with better odds, some with worse), going against all “rational” judgment.
So what can we learn from this? People are never truly rational. Things that may make complete sense may actually be damaging you.
February 28th, 2007
posted in Psychology, Top, Marketing |
no comments
Lisa Barone over at Search Engine Guide wrote a fantastic article on keyword research if you haven’t done much of it before. Great guide for the beginner!
She breaks it down nicely into five (six?) phases:
- Phase 0 - Demolishing Misconceptions
- Phase 1 – Creating the list and checking it twice
- Phase 2 – Befriending the keyword research tool
- Phase 3 – Finalizing your list
- Phase 4 – Plan your Attack
- Phase 5 – Rinse, Wash Repeat
Easy, enjoyable read too. Nicely done, Lisa!
February 27th, 2007
posted in Keyword Research, Marketing |
no comments
Most of the time, it’s not enough to be the best. To be a market leader, you have to be first.
Look at Netflix and Blockbuster. Blockbuster offers a cheaper, comparable service and allows you to take movies home from their physical locations, in addition to millions spent on advertising, yet it still has less than a third of the market share. Wal-Mart tried to enter the arena, and crashed and burned - never making it above 2.6% market share.
Basic econ claims people would switch, but the risk of switching to another service that they think they’d have to learn how to use isn’t worth the $2 per month they’d be paying. If it even costs them one hour to cancel Netflix, set up a Blockbuster account, and learn the new system, that costs the average person $20 - it would take almost a year to recoup those benefits.
So how do you break people out of the mindset that “even though my service isn’t the best, it’s good enough that I won’t waste time switching”? Make your service the first - by creating a new category that didn’t exist before.
If you’re in your own category, you’ll have no competition, but how exactly do you break out and make a brand new sector? Take something that’s unique about your site, and tout it everywhere - exaggerate its significance on the site. Don’t label yourself as part of the crowd you’re like, but do label the new category.
Look at Digg. At its most basic level, it’s people voting for content. This idea isn’t new. Digg’s new features were:
1) Socialization. It got implemented at the right time, and it caught on.
2) The time-based algorithm. Votes were not counted equally, but rather based on how frequently they were coming in, hence allowing for an automated and real-time system.
Then look at Coca-Cola and Pepsi - who’s to say one product is better than another? Both have their fans, but Coca-Cola came first, and so people still trust and like it more.
Here’s another: Google. It wasn’t the first search engine. It was the first search engine to use backlinks as a criterion. Yahoo! was already a search engine, but not in Google’s “new” category, and as a result, it’s still struggling to catch up (although it never will until it breaks into completely new territory - fact).
So to sum it up: Take your most unique asset or assets (focus on one or two), and advertise it/them as much as possible. Base a new “category” around it. Reap the rewards of no competition.
If you don’t have a unique asset, then you’ll never break out. Sorry.
Sidenote: “AJAX” is NOT a unique asset.
February 26th, 2007
posted in Digg, Top, Articles, Marketing |
no comments
Since Stumble has been sending many of us a huge amount of traffic, I thought it would be useful to find some resources on how to best make use of this traffic. This list will be kept updated with the best articles found - if you have one, please let me know by emailing me or commenting. There’s still a dire need for some good, informative articles.
Also, if you want to check me out on SU, my Stumble username is thebogo. Italicized entries have been recently added (Saturday, May 12th).
If you have a quality article, or know of one, comment or email me and I’ll add it to the resource. Read more for extra articles that didn’t quite make it to the top of the list.
Continue reading “Ultimate StumbleUpon Resource”
February 22nd, 2007
posted in Blog Tools, StumbleUpon, Social Search, Top, Articles, Marketing |
20 comments
As I was Stumbling about, I ran across a unique website - which, in itself is a rarity.
What was it about? A man with a dream, striving to get his idea heard by the big corporation. The idea itself is a complete secret, and all the page has is a simple blog of the events of the last week or so.
This has a lot of elements of successful buzz and viral marketing:
- Not overtly for commercial profit (no ads anywhere)
- Has an element of secrecy and exclusiveness (we’re not part of the club, but we’d like to be)
- Story of little guy versus the big guy (David v. Goliath story)
- Story of a man pursuing his dream (something we all want to root for, a common denominator)
Within 5 days, he was able to get quite a few visitors, and more importantly, he was able to convert them into a small but thriving community. And no one knows what his idea is. I know I’m anxiously looking forward to see where this site leads.
Consider these elements the next time you’re planning a buzz or viral campaign, and they’ll help make it make it more successful!
February 19th, 2007
posted in Top, Marketing |
no comments
I’ve been considering the importance of facial recognition in building brands based around expertise-based businesses, such as, for instance, blogging.
Most bloggers are individuals that are working by spreading their knowledge, and are in essence, a business. As most businesses have logos, the bloggers’ have their faces. Why is it important to spread your face as much as possible (and part of the reason why MyBlogLog has caught on)? There are two reasons as to why plastering your face on your blog is important: one scientific, one realistic.
The scientific
A lot of facial recognition is done in one of the most basic, emotional centers of the brain: the amygdala. This center also has some of the highest concentration of neurons and interneural connections, meaning a HUGE amount of processing goes on here. If you use a face, you touch someone on a very basic, very emotional level, and they’ll remember you (and like you) a whole lot better.
The Realistic
When was the last time you forgot someone’s face? And when was the last time you forgot someone’s name?
February 13th, 2007
posted in MyBlogLog, Blog Tools, Top, Articles, Marketing |
no comments
As a psychology major, one of the first lab experiments I did was teach a lab rat some little tricks, like pulling a lever or standing on its hind legs.
That’s kind of cool, but how does it apply to you? Hey, wouldn’t you love to be able to control your visitors like that?
Maybe you don’t want them to pull a lever, and making them stand up is the last thing you want them to do, but what if you can get them to comment, click a link, or do anything else more often?
When the rat pulled the lever, or stood on its hind legs, I gave it a small pellet of food. The rat ate the morsel and then went back to work, pulling my lever for me.
As an offhand note – the rat’s name was Cain. For some reason, my girlfriend thought this was uncute and decided to rename it “Sparklefairy.†In retrospect, she realizes this is an absolutely ridiculous name.
Fortunately, when it comes to training, human beings haven’t evolved much beyond rats. We see examples of this constantly, and we can use it when creating a site design.
There are five “schedules†of reinforcement. All of them are good, but one, the fifth one, keeps people coming back for more, and more, and MORE…
It’s the kind of thing that causes people to get addicted, and who doesn’t want addicted visitors?
Give it to ‘em every time! (Constant Reinforcement)This is the simplest kind of reinforcement. Every time Cain did something that I liked, I gave him a treat. Easy and effective, and he learned his tasks quickly.
Unfortunately, this schedule is much more costly than any of the other methods and you run the risk of satiating your subjects (meaning they’ll be full and won’t pull your lever anymore, because they’re not hungry).
Examples of constant reinforcement are purely information-based websites such as Merriam-Webster or Wikipedia. When you search for information on these sites, you get a result that fills your need, and therefore no longer need to look.
Make ‘em wait! (Fixed Interval)
Sometimes I’d set it up so that Cain would have to wait one minute after he was rewarded before he could get more. No matter how many times he pressed the lever, nothing would happen. Once the minute passed, the first lever pull rewarded Cain, and then he’d have to wait again. Quickly, he learned that pulling the lever right after a reward wouldn’t give him more food, and so Cain stopped working for me for free. Boo, Cain, boo.
This strategy by itself isn’t very useful. Forcing your visitors to not act is counter-productive. However, in conjunction with other strategies, it can have a very positive effect. For example, Yahoo! Answers rewards you for visiting the site once a day, giving you a small incentive to check in and see what’s going on in the site, and maybe answering (or asking?) a few questions. Blingo.com allows you to search ten times a day with a chance of winning a prize each time.
Try and Try Again (Fixed Ratio)
With a fixed ratio setup, I made Cain pull the lever a certain number of times before he received food. Once he learned the setup, Cain would pull the lever slowly after each reward, and then more quickly as it came closer to the last pull – knowing you’re closer to your goal makes you work harder for it. On the other hand, knowing you’re far from your goal may make you put off working for it.
Many pyramid scheme sites employ a fixed ratio reward system – “Get five of your friends to sign up, and get a free iPod!†Many of these types of sites also use points as a midterm reward - a constant reinforcement - to achieve the periodic reinforcement of the end result (an iPod, XBox 360, etc.)
Is it ready yet? (Random Interval)
With this schedule, Cain didn’t get reinforced until a random amount of time had passed since his last morsel of food. This resulted in similar learning to fixed interval, although slightly faster.
Generally, I’d stay away from this kind of reinforcement, as either fixed interval or random ratio is more appropriate and effective for almost any occasion.
Gambling Addiction! (Random Ratio)
Here’s the one I mentioned before – the schedule that gets people addicted. And frankly, what’s better than addicted users? Casinos make money hand over fist. Cigarette companies are still posting a hefty profit even with massive taxes and legal costs. Alcohol is a booming industry in good times and bad. And there’s almost no chance your site will kill people (Digg hasn’t – yet…).
Getting a royal flush in poker doesn’t mean you won’t get a full house on the next hand, so you’ll still try just as hard to win the next, and the bite of the gambling bug is something we’ve all felt at one point or another. At the same time, getting twenty bad hands doesn’t mean you’ll get another bad hand either.
Random ratio is simple in that every lever pull or comment or click will have an equal chance of winning, and often times the system allows you to win far more than you lose. Cain learned the system, and he realized the more and the faster that he pulled the lever, the more food he got. And he started working hard.
Now if you can implement a reward system in which essentially every action has a chance of achieving a (big?) reward, your visitors will be much more likely to do that action in a frenzy. Mix that in with the fact that people overestimate small odds and overrate their chances of winning large prizes, you’ll be able to create a site that people won’t be able to tear themselves away from.
And that means more money for you.
February 6th, 2007
posted in Psychology, Top, Articles, Monetizing, Marketing |
one comment
Every veteran SEOer already knows the information in this article, but for those of us just starting up, I felt the first post would be a good time to do a review of the basics.
Fact #1: Google is God
Fact #2: Links, Links, Links!
Fact #3: There’s No Substitute for Good Content
Fact #4: Build for the User, not the Search Engine
Fact #5: Making Money Online is HARD
Continue reading “5 SEO Basics Everyone Should Know”
January 29th, 2007
posted in Top, Articles, Marketing |
7 comments
