Viral marketingSearch engine advertising

MARK 430 WEEK 9

Today’s class will cover:

• Viral marketing

• Search Engine Advertising: Methods of pay-per-click contextual advertising used in search engines• How to set up a Google AdWords campaign

VIRAL MARKETING

Before we start….

• Why videos go viral Kevin Allocca TED 2011 (7 minutes)

• So what is going on here?

Viral marketing – what is it?• A marketing phenomenon that encourages

people to pass along a marketing message in such a way that it spreads like a virus or a meme– Compulsive reading, listening or viewing

• Can be text, image, video, sound file

– So amazing that people have the urge to share with others

• Social media is the engine for viral marketing because of the “network effect”

• WoM is trustedBased on: eMarketing eXcellence. 2008. Chaffey et al. BH

Engaging in the conversation – balancing control and credibility

Traditional marketing communications and PR

CONTROL

CREDIBILITY

Spontaneity

Dialogue

Monologue

Conversation

Community

“a person like yourself”

Advertising

Based on ideas from Edelman’s Trust Barometer

Viral marketing (word-of-mouth direct marketing)

• Viral includes any strategy that encourages people to pass on your message to others– Word of mouth is the most trusted form of communication

(because the message is coming from “a person like yourself”

• Let the users of the Internet do your marketing for you – traditionally by eMail, but now by using social networking sites, blogs and video sharing sites

• Built-in mechanism to pass on to someone else– It works (sometimes), and it’s free or low cost (sometimes)– VERY difficult to plan for and do successfully – especially as it has

been around for more than 20 years – people become jaded

Viral marketing – having “remarkable” products

• Seth Godin on How to Get Your Ideas to Spread “sliced bread and other marketing delights” - getting people to talk about you and your products (17 minutes)

• TED conference, 2003

Using social media sites for viral marketing – watch out!

• "While these sites may appear to be the most effective manner of delivering a message regardless of brand appropriateness," he said, "by failing to truly understand the audience, viral marketers stand to alienate as many consumers as they interest." – David Schatsky, President, JupiterResearch, on the pitfalls of social networking sites:

• Undercover or “stealth” marketing - be careful of customer perception that they are being “used” – people are increasingly sophisticated and cynical– Fake bloggers etc (eg. Mazda commercials disguised as user generated

videos)

• Watch out for people to highjack your campaign with parody videos, or highjacking of your hashtag

Elements of a viral marketing campaign

1. Creative material – the viral agent (text, image, video)

– Consider meme-jacking?

2. Seeding – identifying websites, blogs, or people (influencers) to start the message moving

– Understand and exploit existing communications networks – go where the people are

3. Tracking – to monitor the effect, to assess the return from the cost of developing the viral agent and seeding

• Based on: eMarketing eXcellence. 2008. Chaffey et al. BH

Can virality be predicted or reproduced?

• Tod Maffin’s Six Genetic Markers of Viral Marketing1. AAC Matching2. Simple concept3. Sentiment4. Reward sharing5. Embrace unofficials6. Successive rounds

Tod Maffin. Viral Marketing. The Six Genetic Markers

AAC matching

• The target Audience must match the Creative, which must match the Call-to-Action

• No mixed messages

Tod Maffin. Viral Marketing. The Six Genetic Markers

Simple Concept

• Plots and developed characters do not get traction

• Keep the campaign simple• One idea at a time• Stop over-thinking

Tod Maffin. Viral Marketing. The Six Genetic Markers

Sentiment

• Your campaign should be either– Serious– Silly– Stunning

• Don’t experiment with other tones– Definitely don’t mix them

Tod Maffin. Viral Marketing. The Six Genetic Markers

Reward sharing

• Incentivize people to share your content and they will share it for you

• Don’t rely on freebies or begging (or bribing)• Give recognition• How about gamification?

Tod Maffin. Viral Marketing. The Six Genetic Markers

Embrace unofficials

• When a fan uses your brand imagery to praise you, embrace them

• Don’t shut them down• Enough with the cease and desist letters

Tod Maffin. Viral Marketing. The Six Genetic Markers

Successive Rounds

• Keep a good idea going (because then it might become a meme?) – build on recognition

• Plan to have at least three “rounds” of content which riffs on your first release.

Tod Maffin. Viral Marketing. The Six Genetic Markers

Then there is this….

• “DisneyCollectorBR is a faceless YouTube channel giant that is consistently among the site’s top most viewed per month. In April, the channel was the third-most viewed worldwide. During the week of July 4 [2014], the DisneyCollectorBR channel received more views in the United States — 55 million — than any other channel on YouTube.” Buzzfeed

Some successful viral marketing campaigns

• Hotmail launch – 1.5 million subscribers in the first 18 months– Gmail strategy?

• Dove Evolution – “Campaign for natural beauty”

• The Old Spice Guy wins an Emmy for social media campaign

• LOTS of examples at Viral Friday

SEARCH ADVERTISING – PAY-PER-CLICK

Search engine marketing recap – distinguishing the two

elements • Search engine optimization – managing

organic search engine placement by optimizing html pages and devising an inbound link strategy (covered in Week 6)

• Search engine advertising (Pay-per-Click)– Paying the search engines to get the results you

want (TODAY’S CLASS)

Paid listings

Organic listings

Paid search versus SEOPaid search• Results can be seen immediately

through increased traffic.

• But : no spending = no results

• Greater control over which keywords are most associated with their company, brands, products or services.

• Additional metrics are available, which means more detailed Web analytics that yield sophisticated knowledge from the data.

SEO• Results are gradual – can take months• But the results can persist –

maintaining position over time• Searchers find it more acceptable

than advertising• Can be complex and may require

external expertise• One process – many results (tends to

bring results across many search engines, not just one)

http://www.iab.net/insights_research/947883/1675/708987

DO BOTH!

Internet advertising formats (IAB report for 2014)

Why is search engine advertising still so popular with marketers?

• Search engines allow marketers to bid on specific key words that trigger an ad when a user types those words into the search engine

• Bought on a Pay-per-Click basis (no click, no payment) – performance model means easy measurement of success

• Less consumer resistance that other forms of advertising – people are actually looking for those goods or services(but remember that CTR still quite low – about 2%)

• Print directory versus search advertising for SME?– Effectiveness can be directly measured– Speed of execution and “tweaking” of advertising copy– Speed of consumer response– Usually more cost-effective

Search engine advertising• Position is purchased as part of an advertising campaign -

guarantees instant visibility• While SEO and PPC advertising are separate techniques,

a well optimized page with good content will also influence the placement of a PPC ad (via Quality Score)

• The website owner has control over:– Position in search results (BUT not always complete control –

depends on AdRank/Quality Score in Google)– Keyword choice– Ad listing copy– Landing page– Geo-targeting– Daily budget and maximum cost-per-click

How is the ranking decided in practice?Google uses a combination of the bid price or cost per click (CPC) and the ad relevancy or click-through rate (CTR) and the Quality Score of the landing page

– CPC x CTR = Google AdRank– Advertiser sets the maximum CPC per day– If an ad with a lower bid per click gets clicked more often, it will rank

higher.– Result - CPC can decrease as an ad becomes more popular, even

though a competitor may be prepared to bid more on the same keyword: more clicks = more money for Google.

– Ranking can be improved by:• Increasing the set daily CPC• Trying to improve relevancy (and therefore CTR) – How? … Tweak the ad text

• AdWords Video: Understanding Ad Rank and Quality Score

Keywords / key phrases

• Just as in SEO it is all about what people are actually typing into search engines

• Create a list of keywords / phrases just as you do for SEO– The big difference is that for search advertising

you can target as many as your budget will allow– Research the advertising that your keywords

actually trigger– Get sophisticated (think long-tail key words and

phrases as in SEO)

Elements of an AdWords campaign

• Google AdWords “Campaign”– Each campaign is made up of one or more

AdGroups – each relating to a separate “theme”, product group, marketing campaign etc

– An AdGroup consists of a set of keywords, bids, and individual advertisements that are managed together

The elements of a basic text-based search engine advertisement

Headline (25 characters max)Click to go to destination landing page

Display URL (35 characters max) not clickable

Description: Two lines of text (35 characters per line max)Include a call to action

What makes up a text ad? (Google)

Think about your ads….

• Better ad text, better performance – some tips on writing better Adwords advertisements

Language and Geo-targeting

• Very cost-effective and highly targeting method of using search engine marketing – cost-per-click will vary according to the geographic target

• Especially useful for:– Small businesses whose target markets are in particular local

areas– Bricks and mortar businesses

• Allows you to target your advertisement to – Particular geographic locations– Particular languages

• Geo-targeting - Bob Nicholson (4 minutes)

Setting goals for an Adwords campaign

• Before you begin to create an Adwords group you need to set goals and metrics (performance indicators so you know you have succeeded)

• Adwords Video: Define Success, then Achieve it

Advertising metrics: ROI and CPA

• ROI = Return on investment• CPC = Cost per click (for performance-based search

ads)• CPM = Cost per thousand (impression) – for display

ads• CPA = Cost per (customer) acquisition

• Google Analytics and AdWords are very strongly tied together

Keyword targeted advertisementsalso served to sites other than the search

engine itself

• The keyword-targeted advertisements appear not just in the search engine results pages, but on the “content network”

• Major players in PPC search engine advertising– Google works with an affiliate network

• Google search engine• Google maps• Mobile devices• Content partner network• AdSense publisher network

• Google Adwords Advertising types – don’t forget that Google offers Display ads as well as PPC ads

Advertising for web publishers

• Google AdWords – for marketers

• Google AdSense – for publishers – Google’s content network - % of CPC paid– Ads are matched to page content, not search

terms – – Different ad formats available, including video ads

– Publishers can choose between PPC ads and Display ads

• How AdSense works

Click fraud

• PPC lends itself to click fraud because of its structure– Advertiser pays the advertising network, which in turn

pays the publisher

• Click fraud = clicking on a paid advertisement for a fraudulent or non-legitimate purpose– By a human, an automated script or a computer program –

an example

• The advertiser pays, the search engine company can be said to benefit (apart from paying out a % to the publisher)

Why click fraud?• Two main types of click fraud:

– Search engine click fraud: artificially raising a competitor’s marketing costs or exhausting their budget to remove them from their position in the listings (usually on very high cost or competitive key terms)

– Publisher click fraud: artificially raising a publisher’s income from AdSense

• Estimated 10% to 15% of ad clicks are fake, representing roughly $1 billion in annual billings (Business Week, 2006).

• Search firms have put tools in place to detect and prevent click fraud (but have still been sued by advertisers) Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center (Google)

• Mobile clicks made in error are now an increasing problem (fat finger syndrome)

• Click fraud is now a social media problem and next class we will look at the problem of fraud in display advertising

Advertising using other firms brand names as keywords

• Type in Molson beer and you might get an ad for Budweiser

• “Tofino hotel” sometimes gets you ads for Ucluelet hotels

• Legal in the US and Canada? Recent local case Vancouver Community College v Vancouver Career College (Burnaby)

• Ethical?

– Google Trademark Complaint process

Hands on practice

• Explore Google AdWords, research a PPC keyword campaign, and get some practice in designing text advertisements

• AdWords Home• Google Adwords

: How to create a campaign, set up ad groups, and types of advertisements