Web 2.0 Promotions

I have been talking more to the people who are doing the work of social media so the readers of Marketing Pilgrim can step back from the news and the theory to get some feet on the street perspective. More and more those feet on the street are C level executives who are embracing social media to brand themselves and their companies. Kent Huffman of Bearcom Wireless has put together a list of these socially active CMOs on Twitter.

One of these folks, Ted Rubin (@tedrubin), exemplifies the energy and effort that is required to make a place for oneself in the social web for business. I interviewed Ted by e-mail recently to learn about the who, what, where, why and how of his social media efforts as the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of the Eyes Lips Face (e.l.f.) Cosmetics line. I challenge you to find a more active C-level marketer out there.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself. What is your marketing experience and what is your mission as CMO for e.l.f. Cosmetics?

Prior to joining e.l.f., I served as Senior Managing Director of Marketing and Business development for Eastern Union Commercial and RealProspex.com, the fastest growing and most innovative commercial real-estate-listing site in the country. I was also President and CEO of The Black Book and responsible for its turnaround and eventual sale to a private equity group, and have held senior level positions at 1-800-Flowers and Yoyodyne, a Yahoo! company, in addition to running my own internet marketing and business development consultancy which serviced a vast array of online and traditional companies.

As Chief Marketing Officer for e.l.f. Cosmetics, my responsibilities include communicating with and building e.l.f.’s client base, leveraging brand equity through strategic marketing programs, and creating/managing a major thrust into social media initiatives and partnerships. I also focus on strengthening both core products and line extensions, including the extremely successful Studio line and Minerals collection, both launched under my tenure and growing rapidly.

EyesLipsFace.com considers itself not only an e-tailer, but a pioneer of social commerce… a beauty and trendsetting destination site with approximately ten to twelve million page views a month, several hundred thousand monthly visitors and over two million members. I believe the key to continued success is identifying with the customer. Listening is finally getting the respect it deserves through Social Media… listen and adjust your message to make it relevant to your consumer. Brand loyalty declines due to lack of relevance… a direct result of not listening.

Number one is always try to understand who your customer is and stay true to your brand. At e.l.f. we position the brand with a unique approach toward beauty, accessibility, interactivity and consumer engagement.

2. Tell us how long you have been engaged in digital marketing (social media , search etc) and what venues you are currently using.

I have been involved in digital marketing since 1997 when I joined Seth Godin at his online direct marketing company Yoyodyne, which was acquired by Yahoo! a year later. I scaled and continued development of Yoyodyne’s most successful and only profitable product, “Get Rich ClickSM”. My team blew away sales projections from $20,000 in February 1998 to sales in excess of $6 million in the back half of that year – beating projections by more than 200 percent.

Currently at e.l.f. we are very totally immersed in affiliate, search, email, word-of-mouth, and social media marketing… as well as intertwining all of that with a robust earned media presence. In addition we maintain a seven day a week blogging presence and have built a very strong relationship with the Mommy and Beauty Blogging community.

3. Why have you chosen these avenues and are there others that you are considering?

I have chosen these venues because they lend themselves to performance marketing and allow us to either only pay for acceptable results or extend our footprint without the need for a traditional media budget.

We have an extremely high brand visibility and combined with our phenomenal “Affordable Luxury” model we are a great fit with many publishers (and work with most including Hearst, Conde Nast, Hachette Filipacchi, Time, etc.) and websites/bloggers for special features… especially in today’s economic environment.

We are featured regularly in blogs, magazines, newspapers and TV news reports on a daily basis. e.l.f. does not have a traditional marketing budget. The majority of our marketing is through PR, cross promotion, partnership, content sharing, and/or rev share with other websites. We work very aggressively enhancing the e.l.f. client base through hands-on marketing initiatives and are focusing on leveraging and continuing to grow brand equity through strategic marketing programs, partnerships and an aggressive Social Media strategy.

4. You stated in a tweet recently, “This recession, unlike past few, w/hav long term impact on consumr shopng habits. Ignor new valu paradigm at ur own risk. Could you explain what you mean by this?

This recession, unlike other recent downturns, has reached deeper into the wallets and more importantly psyche of most consumers. In addition the effects on the purchasing power of the average consumer will be longer lasting and most have seen the light for the first time in many years about the importance of building a savings base. Due to this, “Value” is now king… “Value” being a combination of price “and” quality. Simply put… consumers want more for less and will insist upon this for a long time to come.

5. Moving forward how do you intend to embrace this new paradigm for e.l.f? What will your marketing efforts look like in 5 years as a result of this shift?

The beauty of our business at e.l.f. is that we were pioneers, trailblazers and trendsetters in this regard. We were doing this when everyone else was raising their prices… even those brands that offered nothing more than fancy packaging for the higher prices.

EyesLipsFace.com is not just an etailer, but a pioneer of social commerce… we have become a beauty and trendsetting destination site with a few hundred thousand monthly visitors and in excess of 2MM members. Check out “the buzz” section on our website… . The majority of e.l.f.’s products are sold for only $1. Our single item price points for our three lines are $1 (our standard line), $3 (Studio line), and $5 (Mineral line).

In today’s rapidly evolving marketing world I am not sure what we will be doing next year, so five years out is not something I am even pondering. My hope is to continue to build upon what we have done to date with regard to engaging and interacting with our members/customers/prospective customers to build a relationship with our brand that will be loyal and enduring.

6. If you were to give someone who is new to the marketing game a bit of free advice what would it be?

Research the social media/marketing medium and become knowledgeable. There’s nothing better than first hand experience. Later, there are many things you will be able to delegate, but this is the one thing that you need to do. I spent months researching and understanding social media before I made many moves in the space for e.l.f.

Build a following for your personal brand. If you are able to build a sizeable audience for your personal brand then you are closer to developing a social marketing strategy for your company.

Set management’s expectations properly so everyone understands what you are trying to accomplish and how to measure those results.

Build a strategy with measurable goals, such as number of followers, growth rate and interactions, but don’t avoid areas that may not be measured accurately as these are potentially very valuable to the company’s bottom line down the road.

Get your hands dirty… interact with your audience and provide that personal touch that a brand so desperately requires.

7. How important do you think video and interactive content will be in the near future?

I think video, and the ability to put a face to the name of user-generated content, will play a huge role in the growth of social media marketing. When the next phase is complete, and the average consumer can manage the ability to embed a link that can click through to a product from a YouTube or other ubiquitous video platform, the next generation advocate/affiliate will arise and become incredibly valuable to a retailer/brand.

In January 2009 we launched a sister site ASKelf.com that hosts all user-generated content posted about e.l.f. around the web, primarily focusing on video, and will soon be integrating it into our site in a significantly upgraded format as the The e.l.f. Beauty Network.

We just re-launched our site this month with a new design and will be adding the The e.l.f. Beauty Network as soon as the design is ready to fit in and some important upgrades are made.

Thanks to Ted for his time. As noted at the start, he may be the “hardest working man in C-level social media”. If you have any questions ask away. I suspect Ted will be willing to “interact” here at Marketing Pilgrim.

While Google has been trying long and hard to corner the mobile search market as much as it has the landline one, they still have a lot to learn about mobile search advertising. Just yesterday, they added the option for AdWords advertisers to target only mobile users with full browsers, such as the iPhone and Android offer.

Advertisers will also be able to segment by specific phones and phone OSes, so if they’re selling a product specific to a single type of device, they won’t waste money on clicks from other device owners.

They’re also adding a feature to automatically segment your ads if you’re running a campaign for an application. Apps for iPhones, for example, need only include the URL for the Apple Store followed by the app’s name in the visible URL for the ad. Then, instead of a display URL showing on the ad, users will see a download link. This will also work for Android apps.

AdWords will also add the ability to segment by phone carrier in the US and Canada, so if you have a special deal with one of the carriers, or are otherwise affiliated with them (or not), you can further target your audience.

In all, more narrow targeting is usually a good thing. This allows advertisers to only show ads to potential buyers, and not waste money on clicks from people who couldn’t buy or use their products. It also removes irrelevant ads from users’ displays. It will mean a few more clicks when setting up a campaign, and possibly more work in dividing up ads into ad groups, but in all, this should help advertisers and users.

What do you think? Will you use this targeting? Will you be happy to see it on your phone?

If you’ve used Gmail, you’ve probably noticed the ads running along the right-hand side of the screen when viewing an email. And you’ve probably noticed that these ads . . . well, sometimes they’re not to relevant to you, the email, or . . . pretty much anything else.

Gmail is admitting their shortcoming—and they’re working to make this better. Now, instead of serving only marginally relevant ads beside your emails, they’ll go back and look at the last email you viewed and use those ads again. (Because they worked so well the first time, when you were actually thinking about that topic?)

On the Gmail blog, Google explains:

[S]ometimes, there aren’t any good ads to match to a particular message. From now on, you’ll sometimes see ads matched to another recent email instead. For example, let’s say you’re looking at a message from a friend wishing you a happy birthday. If there aren’t any good ads for birthdays, you might see the Chicago flight ads related to your last email instead.

Of course, Google is also quick to reassure: this process is fully automated, and no humans are ever reading your email to match up ads. No advertisers are ever given your information. You’re safe.

As always, for visual learners, Google has a video:

In all, I suppose ads that are more relevant to users are always a good thing. I don’t really expect click through rates to go up, though, since it seems like most Gmail users are probably already pretty ad blind (and it’s only the truly irrelevant ones that catch my attention in the first place, ).

What do you think? Will this net more revenue for Google?

According to its 7th annual survey, Alterian suggests that 66% of marketers plan to invest in social media over the next 12 months, but only 36% plan to monitor and analyze the success–or failure–of their efforts.

In fact, when you look at the breakdown, 40% of the 1,000 marketers surveyed plan to steal 20% or more of their traditional direct marketing budget to feed their new found social media marketing habit.

Considering Alterian recently acquired Techrigy, I’m sure they share my surprise–and maybe concern–that compared to the amount of spending planned for social media marketing, more is not being allocated towards actually monitoring and measuring that ROI.

This chart shows best the disparity between spend on each:

Yeah, I’m biased–I want you to use a social media monitoring tool–but really, would you consider launching an SEO campaign without having web analytics on your site? No? Then why would you spend hundreds of thousands on a social media marketing initiative, without monitoring your reach, response, and successes?

Of course, it could just be that these marketers are more thrifty than naive. After all, why spend thousands on media monitoring, when plans start at just $18 a month? A blatant plug, I know, but mama needs a new pair of shoes!

Twitter…the final frontier. These are the voyages of game-maker Atari. Its 2-month mission: to explore strange new social networks, to seek out new geeks and new game players, to boldly go where no ad campaign has gone before!

[Cue intro]

If you’re a Trekkie, you’re probably already well aware of the pending February 2nd launch of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) "Star Trek Online." Well, according to ClickZ, its creator, Atari Inc., has decided to reach those that don’t quite go as far as greeting each other with "Live Long and Prosper," by launching a number of social media initiatives to promote the game.

YouTube, Facebook, and secret access codes on game sites, have all been part of Atari’s marketing efforts, but my favorite has to be its Twitter strategy:

For Twitter, the New York-based company has created a microsite-app combo, dubbed "Tweet in Klingon," that allows viewers to type English phrases and have them tweeted in fictional Klingon language.

And you thought Foursquare updates were annoying. Wait ’til people realize they can start tweeting in Klingon. Better yet, they start updating their Foursquare status in Klingon. Race ya to become the Mayor of Adigeon Prime!

The complaints pile up daily about the amount of spam and malware that proliferates the social media world. It even reaches the highest levels such as the recent takeover of the FCC chairman’s Facebook account that resulted in e-mails going out to all of his “friends”. While I know I shouldn’t, I have to laugh at that one. Maybe that’s part of the reason why the government is turning its attention to Facebook? Who knows but it sure be inspiration to look a little closer.

In an attempt to capitalize on this brave new world for spammers and hackers Websense is offering a new product called Defensio (how much time was spent on that name?). The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog reports:

Thursday tech-security company Websense will announce software called Defensio that allows Facebook users to better police the comments appearing on their wall and fan pages. In addition to detecting and blocking threats such as phishing and malicious Web sites, the software lets users restrict comments that include profanity or adult content.

Social media security software sounds like a nice new marketing term for the future, which will likely continue to get worse with regard to these concerns. While one would hope that services like Facebook and Twitter would be doing everything they can to police their own side of the street it may be up to third party developers to really do the trick. The sites themselves are more concerned about those darn investors and their silly requests for revenue.

Of course, the cat an mouse game of spammers and hackers and those who try to stop will always leave the protection lacking.

But Websense still has a ways to go to catch up to the rapidly evolving cons on social-networking sites. One scam that has been rampant lately involves compromising a user’s account and using Facebook’s live chat in an attempt to defraud the user’s friends. Dan Hubbard, Websense’s chief technology officer, said the beta version of the software does not include a chat scanner but that Websense is looking at that possibility.

Will your Facebook account ever be free of these threats? No. As long as people keep saying yes to every silly third party app that gets tossed in front of them to grow digital vegetables or take some asinine survey or profile to determine the course of their lives these things will happen. Based on that it looks like the social media security industry could be one of growth for quite some time.

Oh and if you want to take Defensio for a spin head over to their web site. The beta is free and is likely to remain that way for personal Facebook users but there are plans in the works to charge for business use. Sound familiar?

YouTube is always on the prowl to find ways to make money off the gazillion gaziggawatts of video that it already has and is always collecting. As with most online services this quest for revenue is an ongoing battle that requires considerable creativity as well as a lot of experimentation. On Friday YouTube will roll out its online video rental option as one of those attempts to add to Google’s coffers.

The Wall Street Journal tells us

Google Inc.’s YouTube said it will begin testing a new online video service on Friday, entering the rental turf of other technology giants such as Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix Inc.

YouTube will begin testing the service with five movies from the Sundance Film Festival, the company said Wednesday in a blog post. It plans to later expand its rental selection to a range of health, education and fitness categories, a company spokesman said.

The disclosure marks one of YouTube’s first major pushes into delivering paid video rather than supplying videos that can be viewed for free in exchange for watching ads. YouTube is hoping that the new payment option—which allows a content supplier to set the price per rental—will draw more professional content, including offerings from major film and TV studios, to its site.

I am probably the worst person to be talking about video rentals because in my house there isn’t much room for art in between the Dora the Explorer videos my three year adores (and the rest of us simply tolerate) and other things vying for our attention. In other words, I may be in the market but until this service is more mainstreamed I will be on the sidelines.

YouTube is trying to differentiate itself from the competition like Amazon, Apple and Netflix by presenting a flexible pricing option for video offering.

Media companies could be enticed by the more flexible business model YouTube is offering. Unlike Apple’s iTunes Store, which has set tiers of pricing for rentals of movies, Google is allowing partners to set the price that it will charge consumers and how long they want the rental to last.

Consumers must pay through Google’s payment service, Google Checkout. Google and the content supplier will split the revenue, with the partner getting the majority, a YouTube spokesman said.

The first five films, which will cost $3.99 to rent from Friday through Jan. 31, will include “The Cove,” a documentary about the dolphin fishing industry, and “Homewrecker,” a comedy about a locksmith.

Personally I find stories about companies trying to monetize their offerings vs stories about innovation pretty much the same thing no matter who is trying to generate revenue. It’s just another business saying “If you really like our service we’re going to make you pay …….. someday, some way.”

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Two out of three online measurement firms agree: Bing lost ground in December. Experian Hitwise and Nielsen saw Bing’s search share decrease from November, while comScore saw it grow.

comScore saw Bing grow 4% from 10.3% to 10.7% (and Yahoo, Ask & the rest lost some). Hitwise, however, reported that Bing saw a 4% decrease in December (0.42 percentage points, coming in at 8.92%), as did Yahoo (0.56 percentage points, now 14.83%) and Ask (0.11 percentage points, now 2.54%). Google, naturally, grew 1% (0.68 percentage points, 72.25%). Nielsen reported an 8% drop in Bing’s share (0.8 percentage points, 9.9%), while Yahoo saw a 6% drop (0.9 percentage points, 14.4%).

Comparing the data to May (the last month of Microsoft/Live search before Bing’s launch) yields somewhat different results. Nielsen shows that Bing gained 0.5 percentage points by December, while Hitwise shows they’ve gained 3.28 percentage points. comScore says they’re up by 2.7 percentage points over that period.

However, all the measurement firms agree that Google was up and Yahoo (and Ask) slightly down in December. If Bing’s success is coming at Yahoo’s expense, will this bode well for their deal?

We saw lots of early reports that Bing was growing its market share, but after six months, are the results as dramatic as you expected?

via

After a long debate, the New York Times has officially settled on an online pay model and and implementation timeline. The meter system will be introduced at the beginning of next year.

The model will allow users to access a certain number of articles free each month. After the set viewing threshold, users will be required to pay. Print subscribers will have free access online. Says the Times:

This will enable NYTimes.com to create a second revenue stream and preserve its robust advertising business. It will also provide the necessary flexibility to keep an appropriate ratio between free and paid content and stay connected to a search-driven Web.

Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman and publisher of the New York Times, said, “Our audiences are very loyal and we believe that our readers will pay for our award-winning digital content and services.” According to Nielsen Online, the Times is the #1 newspaper site in the world, so they may just have enough support to do this.

Romenesko also has posted a memo to the Times staff on the upcoming change (via). In the memo, Sulzberger acknowledges that this move will be lauded by some and criticized by others, just as the management debated it. Ultimately, he says, this move will be judged by its implementation, which is why they’re giving themselves so long to run up to the process. In the meantime, they will also work on improving the site, its users’ experience and its stickiness.

Sulzberger explains their reasoning behind this pay model choice, echoing some of the press release wording:

We also selected the metered model because it offers a number of important virtues from a financial and growth perspective. It allows NYTimes.com to remain a vibrant part of the search-driven Web, which has proven to be an integral reason for why we have become an industry leader in display advertising. This flexibility enables us to create a proper ratio between free and paid content and to aggressively build on our very successful digital advertising business.

He also says the Times will not join a consortium.

I’m glad they’ll keep some of their content free—I’m hoping that such features as their blogs will remain free without counting toward the article limit. The Times is a valuable, venerated resource.

But personally, I won’t be paying for a subscription, or using the site enough to incur use fees the vast majority of the time. Will you?

Yesterday I looked at the idea that Microsoft was playing the nice corporate citizen to a European group by agreeing to purge data from their search engine after 6 months and then asking for their competitors to do the same. How chivalrous. Well, today there are reports that Microsoft is just fine with letting others drive the Internet car for them because they are being viewed as a pawn in the growing battle between Google and Apple.

How is that you ask? There are discussions underway to replace Google as the default search for the iPhone with bing. Gee, I wonder where that came from? Could it be this little scuffle about the whole mobile market and this Nexus One / Android / moving in on the iPhone territory approach that Google is taking? Boy, once Eric Schmidt left the board of Apple it looks like the stuff has hit the fan.

BusinessWeek reports:

Apple is in talks with Microsoft to replace Google as the default search engine on its iPhone, according to two people familiar with the matter. The talks have been under way for weeks, say the people, who asked not to be named because the details have not been made public.

This of course opens the door wide open for speculation but the reality is still pretty clear. This is a potential PR move to ding Google more than it is a great play for bing. Why? Because iPhone users (on the whole) are likely to be smart enough to use something other than a default search function if they like another option better.

Louis Gray offers an interesting take on this as well because this looks less and less like a shrewd business move and more like corporate gamesmanship:

Apple has gained a loyal customer base through focusing on best of breed, even if it costs a little bit more. From Apple, I should be able to assume a higher quality product, and something that reflects real worth. Bing is good, the very best Microsoft has ever offered in search, but backroom shenanigans dealt out due to hurt feelings or assumed alliances is wrong, no matter what.

Let’s not dwell on the history or even the details here. Let’s look to discuss this. What could be lost / gained by Apple in a deal like this? What could be lost / gained by Google? Does Microsoft care what is lost or gained just as long as someone is talking about bing?