The economic downturn has decreased revenues in nearly every sector of business, including digital advertising. Yet, because of the shift, the digital sector has quickly become a haven for more traditional ad budgets. The Internet is viewed as the most measurable medium and its performance-based ad models are becoming increasingly attractive for offline campaigns that lack the deep metrics and engagement factor that digital media provides.
Local advertising deserves ample attention in this shift since it accounts for 55% of all ad spending. The total ad market in 2009 was over $235 billion; more than $130 billion of that was spent on local ads, as reported by BIA/Kelsey in its new report: “U.S. Local Media Annual Forecast.”
By 2014, local advertising is predicted to account for 25 percent of all digital media advertising. A “steady shift toward digital media” will cause online spending to increase to $37 billion by that time, up from $15 billion in 2009. While local will grow, the BIA/Kelsey report also foresees larger than previously forecasts declines in newspapers and direct mail.
Mobile will drive a good deal of the local advertising growth. Most people now have Internet access via their mobile devices and when we’re on the move, we’re thinking and engaging at a local level. Thus, cohesive mobile campaigns will not only help businesses, it will serve the mobile subscribers directly or indirectly seeking local products and services. As more mobile ad formats are delivered, the mobile ad market could see even greater gains.
Social media isn’t just for students anymore. Some schools are utilizing Facebook, Twitter and blogs to keep in touch with parents, community members and alumni. Since it is easier to reach these constituents where they are instead of getting them to visit the school websites.
“It’s what the kids and parents are at home with, and it’s really important to be able to meet them where they are,” says Marlene Nesary, a spokeswoman International Society for Technology in Education, an Eugene, OR based nonprofit group that supports the use of information technology in learning.
Schools are realizing that the simplicity of social media status updates and opening up two-way communication are real and relationship-building benefits that social media platforms provide.
“If you can read a blog and can see pictures and watch video clips, all of a sudden you have some insight into what’s going on,” says Adrian Murphy the teacher at Green Acres in Rockville, MD that is responsible for the school’s new blog. “You’ve been invited to the conversation, and you can participate on your time.”
Reading a blog about interesting goings-on with the students and school can take as little as a minute or two, but getting parents to visit the school for a parent-teacher conference is very time-consuming. The instant and always-on nature of social media enables better, more consistent communication while preserving the precious commodity of time.
Schools and educator websites are traditionally geared toward providing students and educators with topical information about school programs, classes, calendars and homework resources. But with dwindling school budgets and social media trends, some schools are looking for additional ways to create community and improve fundraising options. Local search is one way that education websites can give their constituents another reason to frequent their websites and opportunities to partner with local businesses for sponsorships.
Local search increases routine visits and revenue for schools
Educational institutions possess both the trust and contact information of an extremely valuable commodity: residents of local communities. This is where the “real users” are – the people looking for local products and services on a daily basis. In addition, the majority of residents within the local area have broadband connectivity” the faster the connection, the more routine web searching, research and purchasing becomes. Couple this with findings that 92 percent of local searches convert to sales later offline, and it is easy to see why these real local users constitute the audience that marketers crave – and why local search advertising is growing so quickly.
WeAreNetwork - family-friendly local search
WeAreNetwork, a local search network, powers Educated Search’s local search results. The human-edited, child-safe local directories feature about 140 of the most popular local search categories, from accountants to dentists, children’s stores to worship locations.
With the family-friendly search environment that WeAreNetwork provides, Educated Search clients can rest easy, knowing that the businesses their students & parents are viewing are appropriate for school-age children and are sound businesses serving their local communities.
Educational search + local search = best solution for students, parents, schools
Educated Search’s custom-designed search engine for the benefit of schools, students, parents and the local community. Educated Search builds user-friendly search software that protects children from improper online content while giving schools the ability to create their own search content, directing students to the online research outlets that suit the current curriculum. Additionally, local business information can be added to the engine to create a local portal for students, parents and area residents. In this local search” section of the school’s website, sponsorships and advertisements can be placed which are relevant to students and parents and will promote revenue for the school.
The headlines of the last six months reveal another ugly underbelly of the economic downtown: major school budget cuts in the hundreds of millions of dollars. To combat this, a growing number of schools are turning to money rich corporate sponsors, a practice typically reserved for events and sports team, but now a welcome outlet for increasingly essential school fundraising.School budgets are supplied by: local taxes (44%), state governments (47%) and the federal government (7%). Half of the states are facing budget shortfalls due to factors such as the housing downturn which diminishes sales tax revenue and property taxes and job losses which result in reduced income tax collections. Very heavily reliant on decent economic conditions, its easy to see why schools are taking a hit in this financial downturn.Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty views corporate sponsorship as an opportunity to procure much-needed funds: “I think it’s a good thing. I think there should be public-private partnerships in schools,” says Fenty. “I don’t think the government should just try and do everything themselves.”Schools sell naming rights to corporate sponsors. Texas and California have raised millions of dollars by selling naming rights to football games and allowing sponsors such as Pepsi and Nike brand high school sporting events.Even smaller cities are selling naming rights to gyms, locker rooms, cafeterias, school kitchens and even the principal’s office. For instance, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Acuity Insurance bought the naming rights to field houses for $650,000. Aurora Health Care sponsored the workout equipment for $400,000. And Associated Bank branded in-school stores for $60,000. Total naming rights have garnered over $1.5 million to schools in Sheboygan, a city of 51,000.Mayor Juan Perez says it’s a painless way to increase revenue, because the economic situation is “very bleak.” A city council Alderman, Mark Hanna from Sheboygan says, “Like so many cities, we’re struggling with an ever-shrinking budget and with the fact that our taxpayers are just tapped out.”But is allowing corporate sponsorship into schools widely attainable or appropriate? CEO Dean Bonham of the Bonham Group, a sports marketing company that negotiates naming indicates that the sponsor relationship works for schools and cities because “it costs them nothing to create this revenue.” For companies, he says sponsorship is “the best marketing platform available.”
In cities that have embraced sponsorships, little controversy from residents or school employees has been heard. The importance of maintaining school programs and staff trumps the curiosity of corporate branding.
From the playing field to the search field: sponsors go online
With this kind of out-of-the-box thinking, some schools are taking the tread even further. With the explosion in Internet and mobile usage and broadband penetration, educators have come to rely on the Internet as an essential tool for students to perform research and complete assignments. The next step is to transform portions of their websites into fundraising mechanisms.
Educated Search is a company whose mission is to create custom-designed, child-safe search engines for the benefit of schools, students, parents and the local community. The Educated Search engine creates a platform for more relevant, education-specific and local information. The search box is placed on the school’s home page and every page of the website, helping students and site visitors find what they need more quickly.
Businesses can gain focused brand exposure by sponsoring categories and subcategories in the education component of the ES search engine. Examples of categories include, “Solar Power” and “Shakespeare.” Local categories range the gamut, from travel to pet supplies to financial services and restaurants. As students and parents visit the school website, they will type in keywords specific to the categories and subcategories. The business will be recognized as the “Official Sponsor of the Category” when the search result is displayed. This will be an unobtrusive display, such as a small business logo next to the keyword category displayed on the search result page.
Companies already acquainted with youth charities easily transition to online sponsors
Speedy Cash, a Wichita-based financial services company, is in the oft-maligned but actually quite helpful industry of payday loans and cash advances. When used properly, people who find themselves in emergency financial situations can save money compared to late fees on bills. A single late payment fee per month could be the equivalent of a child’s education fund over the course of 20 years. A key to managing short-term expenses in tough times can include services such as payday loans. Speedy Cash regularly sponsors charities and youth organizations and schools in the communities it serves. Speedy Cash and corporations like them make excellent candidates for school sponsorships through the school’s search engine on its website.
With the inclusion of local and topic-specific sponsorships and advertising, the school search engine also becomes a revenue-generating resource for the school, allowing for investment in other beneficial student educational programs.
To follow up on my last blog post and illustrate just how much strangers now influence our opinions and decisions, I thought I’d post some revealing findings about the importance of worldwide input via social media.
In Universal McCann’s recent report, “When did we start trusting strangers?” in the “Proliferation of influencer channels” section, it is posited that the web is encouraging trust among strangers the world over. This trend does not correlate with the societal assumption that strangers are out to get us. Rather, we see the web as an equalizer; a readily accessible platform for expression of all peoples. Tapping into that global authority expands our knowledge boundaries and allows us to shape our opinions based on the widest range of (assumably) unbiased, unsolicited and candid information. If knowledge is power, then it seems that we’re craving the power of that collective voice so much that we now hold stranger’s opinions in nearly as high a regard as the people we personally know.
We trust strangers online almost as much as face to face recommendation
The top four trusted forms of recommendation are all direct conversation -
significantly two of these are now on internet channels: email and Instant Messenger
We would much rather trust a stranger than a celebrity, by a long way
We trust a stranger over any paid-for communications or advertising
We trust a stranger more in a regulated environment like reviews in a retail site such as Amazon or an auction site like eBay
Blogs are becoming a trusted form of opinion, blogs from people you know rank at number 7 and those by from professionals or micropublishers, number 15.
Blogs are almost as trusted as their written word counterparts, magazines and newspapers
Not everything online is trusted: emails from companies are only marginally more trusted than celebrities
Those in our “strangers” sphere might not be our BFF just yet, but from the looks of this report and others cropping up weekly, it seems that they’re quickly becoming PGF (pretty good friends).
When you’re looking to purchase, what mechanisms drive your opinion and finally form your decision? As media changes, so do the channels that we rely on for information and the weight we give to those channels.
Word-of-mouth has always been a major influencer, with friends and family topping the trusted list. But it is the advice from strangers with experience in what we’re seeking that has nearly doubled in value in the past 10 years.
Other influentials include teachers, religious leaders and then media such as newspapers, magazines, radio personalities, TV news reporters, followed by bloggers, advertising and finally, telemarketers (from eMarketer’s chart, “Trusted Sources of Information according to US Consumers, 1997 & 2007″). But a revolution is well under way: we now trust the opinions of strangers whose material we read or view online as much as our friends!
So when did strangers become such a heavy influencer of our decisions? The boom of social media has given us access to billions of ratings, reviews, videos, blogs and micro-blogs, from people we don’t personally know. This state of affairs has been referred to as the “democratization of influence to the masses.” This is a serious call-to-action for all marketers. Social media is now key in our hierarchical decision-making processes and must be recognized as a tool to meet your audience on the new communication grounds.
So how do we come to trust Stranger X’s opinion more than Stranger Y and Z? What strangers have to say is obviously important, but perhaps as important is strangers’ ability to identify with us that makes the difference. As we look at avatars, read profiles, skim comments and blogs and view video clips, we look for clues that help us decide whether this is an opinion we’d trust. It might be abstract, but it’s the little things that influence whether we identify with that someone in one way or another.
It might be their work or life experience, notoriety, social life, family situation, appearance, personality or their style of communication that help form our “online” opinion of these strangers. As we gather those clues, we filter them through our own prisms of experience and knowledge. Does their opinion add up? Can we supplement our knowledge base with the views expressed by Stranger X? We’ll count or discount these influencing factors, and move onto the next review, comment, tweet, chat message, email or video until we’ve reached our own decision-making comfort level. And, we’ll add in a dash of traditional media opinion if applicable, and wrap it all up into our defendable decision.
You may be a little ahead or a little behind this curve, but the reality remains that the opinion of the masses is increasingly important in our lives. Its wise to join the conversation but don’t jump in without some preparation. Transparency and good user experience are essential ingredients if your goal is successful viral marketing. Consumers want to know what makes your company tick, they want to see the faces behind the image and most importantly, they want a great product or service.
SearchIgnite reports a 33% increase in retailer’s ad spending over last year illustrates that retailers are likely pouring more dollars into search campaigns which can be monitored and tweaked in real-time.
Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite notes: “Advertisers are shifting more dollars to paid search and digital media. Retailers want media they can buy on a performance bases to track and measure.”
Despite a decline in overall consumer spending, people are steadily purchasing goods over the Internet. Observationally, retailers are offering more incentives earlier in the season than is typical, likely incentivizing consumers to go ahead and make necessary and discretionary purchases.
The social media hype continues and is enticing companies of every shape and size to dabble in creating new networks. To facilitate the craze, dozens of open source social networking platforms have launched. Jeremiah Owyyang’s blog lists over 60 brandable software platforms that can plug into your existing domain, allowing you to create your very own social network. But should any company build a social network?
In a Deloitte study of 100 businesses with online communities, Ed Moran found that 35% of these communities have less than 100 members and less than 25% have 1000 members. 6% of the businesses studied spent over $1 million on their social networks. Sadly, all too many fail at their attempts to connect customers to their brand because instead of focusing on the community itself, businesses are focusing on the value that social community could provide for their business.
Despite the failures, there are definitely industries that DO have ready-made communities with well-established brand alliance, and have a greater chance of building successful online communities. These verticals might include: local television networks (daily news watchers), radio (listening audiences), niche local communities (apartment renters, child-safe search) and education (school districts, private schools, universities).
Clark County School District, the 5th largest school district in the nation with nearly 300,000 students, was a few years back, reportedly the largest user of bandwidth in the Las Vegas valley. Schools are instant communities – not just in the “will you be my friend” sense of students, but in the student to teacher, student to parent and teacher to parent and relationships. Because they already have distinguishable groups in these necessary and long-standing relationships, Clark County can foster those relationships through a community network, which they’ve begun to explore with the CCSD website. Feedback mechanisms aren’t yet extant, but Homework Hotline, a public television program, gives students an outlet during the week to call in and ask teachers their tough homework assignment questions. Their content management system, my.CCSD.net reach the three main constituents in these ways: 1) teachers can create personalized websites to communicate with students and parents; 2) students can access to homework resources and assignments; 3) parents can locate their children’s classroom and assignment information online without involving the child or teachers. A cursory look at some teacher sites didn’t provide a lot in the way of content or personalization, but it is summer after all – the start of the school year should light this online community back up.
Morals of the story:
If you don’t have a pre-existing community, don’t assume that you can create one (and don’t spend a lot of money trying to create one).
If you do have a pre-existing community (and they already visit your website regularly), focus on the value that your social network will provide to your users.
Laptops and computers are used by students for video games, social media, email, and lecture notes…lecture notes?! New technology initiatives at college campuses are giving students the ability to download digital classroom images which are synced to audio files from their lectures. PowerPoint presentations and animations can be accessed from the school site and downloaded for future viewing. Students use the rich media to intensely study for tests and make sure they didn’t miss anything during the lecture.
According to the New York Times, Limor Raz, a Ph.D. candidate at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, reviews lectures in her neuroscience class by computer. “I can’t stress enough how much it helped me prepare for exams,” she said. “There’s a tremendous difference between viewing the lecture once and seeing it again. It’s not exactly easy, neuroscience. Trust me, it’s very tough.”
Students have been taking notes of lectures for quite a long time; this is just the next step in the evolution of education. It is combining education and technology in a new and innovative way to help not only the students, but the teachers as well, by having students that are better prepared for tests and exams.
Is making online marketing mainstream the answer to helping small businesses increase their exposure and profits? Sam’s Club seems to think so. But does that make it so?
Sam’s Club’s LeadConnect offers online services packages starting at $25/month that include adding a local business’ profile to search engines and Yellow Page directories.
Those in the search industry know that good search engine optimization and marketing techniques include a substantial education cycle and far more action than “hand submissions” to the major search engines and directories. While we’re all for local businesses giving online a chance, it probably isn’t in their best interest to market this type of service without educating on what will really drive results.
Even pay-per-click advertising isn’t the end of a dedicated SEO campaign. Your website has to feature relevant, well-organized content that speaks your customer’s language and provides a 2-way feedback loop between business and customer. Being found because you submitted to the search engines is a long shot, and even if searchers do find you, you still have to engage and support their discovery process.
Being found for a business’ keywords in the search results of local search sites is a better use of advertising dollars, and can provide better conversion rates than PPC or display advertising.
However, what local businesses need is education – not a laborious SEO university education – but some cursory knowledge of what constitutes a results-driven online initiative. Then, they need help in taking the appropriate actions for their budget and specialty.
It’s not just about submitting listings or buying placement – it’s about how you represent online and whether your online presence is as worthwhile to visit as your offline location. And if SMBs don’t understand this, they’ll spend that $25 or $100 a month and not see adequate results. They could become bitter about the Internet and search marketing in general.
Making SEO mainstream sends a message that brands are built by hands-off methods. Truth is, it’s going to take more than $25/month and a one-time web form to make it online. Education and a little manageable action are the keys to using the power of the online community to a small business’ advantage.
