The Engagement Principles

In the era of engagement, how is online advertising faring? And why are clickthrough rates on social media sites so abysmal?

And is the ad-driven business model – the economic engine that was supposed to power the “everything is free” Internet – destined to underperform?

It doesn’t look good (at least according to Eric Clemons at TechCrunch):

Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet

The expected drop in internet advertising revenues this year was neither unpredictable nor unpredicted, nor was it caused solely by the general recession and the decline in retail sales. Internet advertising will rapidly lose its value and its impact, for reasons that can easily be understood.

Traditional advertising simply cannot be carried over to the internet, replacing full-page ads on the back of The New York Times or 30-second spots on the Super Bowl broadcast with pop-ups, banners, click-throughs on side bars. This might be a subject where considerable disagreement is possible, if indeed, pushed ads were still working in traditional media. Mostly they have failed.

What gives? Why is all the nifty social media advertising falling short?

This Isn’t Newspaper or Television

The rub is this: feeding advertising to a television or magazine viewer is an attempt to “interrupt” a passive viewer – one who enjoys little control over their experience beyond the binary (watch, or stop watching).

By contrast, online users have a great deal of control over their experience, and they’re typically actively engaged with getting what they want.

A comparison? Imagine a shopper idly browsing a store. Now compare that shopper to one intent on locating a specific item; the latter is more engaged with the search, and less likely to be distracted.

Engaged readers – not passive consumers – are the explanation for the dismal clickthrough rates on most social media sites.

Social media users aren’t a passive consumers of information, but participants in a community. Unlike non-interactive media, they’re intent on not only receiving information, but acting on it.

And unlike yesterday’s passive information consumer, they also demand to be heard.

If you don’t believe me, try this experiment: Create a blog filled with controversial posts, and then limit the responses to an arbitrary 100 character length.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

engagement marketing, online advertising, engagement, failing advertising rates

The advent of granular search tools – capable of singling out specific conversations on social media like blogs, twitter, Facebook and others – means marketers can now find and track brand-related conversations.

Most marketers consider it a happy reality; they can now intervene when the muttering is bad for the brand (and take credit at the next staff meeting when the news is good).

Still, we have to ask: What happens when your competitor is watching too?

Engagement on the Rebound?

What happens when a customer is on the rebound from a negative interaction – and a competitor takes advantage?

Clearly, the effective storyteller would offer an actual example. Which I’m about to do.

My fly fishing blog’s content is regularly stolen by automated scraper sites, and in this particular instance, the company hosting the scraper’s site (Dreamhost) couldn’t have been less helpful.

After several frustrating emails, it became clear their “abuse” process was simply designed to drive away those with abuse complaints (people like me) rather than protect my intellectual property (as required by law).

Unhappy at their sheltering of an automated scraper site, I vented my unhappiness on my Twitter account.

Less than thirty minutes later, I received a tweet from a Dreamhost competitor.

Which offered me a free trial.

Ouch.

When the Online Conversation Spins Out of Control

For corporate marketers, the bogeyman of the online world remains the loss of control over brand messaging.

With the huddled, Web-surfing masses inconveniently ignoring those expensively crafted messaging documents, what’s left is an often unpretty mash of online conversations, including some featuring an unhappy patina.

Once a company has demonstrated a reluctance to make a customer or prospect happy, that customer’s ripe for conversion – raw meat to any marketing lion.

Since the advent of database-driven marketing, marketing departments have pursued “one-to-one” marketing with a fervor.

In recent years, the delivery of “relevant” offers has acquired a similarly rosy glow.

Reaching out to a potential customer – fresh off a disappointment administered by your competitor – combines “one-to-one” and “relevant” in a uniquely effective format.

And yes – given a little work with the right search engines – it’s entirely possible, though I suspect only in markets with high margins or customers offering significant lifetime value.

I typically describe true customer engagement as a linking of shared passions and values. What if that shared passion simply revolves around mutual loathing for a company?

I suspect most companies are just fine with that.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

Engagement marketing has long suffered from a “hard to measure” reputation. Traditional online/offline metrics don’t readily apply – there’s nothing as neatly packaged as a two-decimal point clickthrough rate from the last email program, or even a solid conversion/revenue figure.

In the age of choice, businesses know engagement is critical, and the thrashing about for measurable results has gone on for years. In one sense, it’s odd that businesses – which were generally content to throw big budgets at print-and-broadcast-based “brand” campaigns for years – are reluctant to fund engagement (and check out the Nike+ site for runners if you don’t think some businesses are moving forward).

A Tokyo Web developer posted an excellent presentation on Social Media ROI, where he contends the problem isn’t one of a lack of metrics, but a focus on the wrong metrics. While his ideas won’t necessarily make the spreadsheet mavens happy, his ideas readily apply in the engagement world (as is the quote he uses to begin his presentation):

From his presentation (posted on the Zygote.egg blog):

It sounds like I’m stating the obvious, but the key to measuring returns is… knowing what to measure. This is the area where businesses – without proper guidance, or internal knowledge – start seeing fuzzy returns. Often the reason organisations or marketing teams don’t see recognisable returns or returns that are hard to quantify for social media campaigns is because they are using the wrong metrics. Choosing the right success metrics (or KPIs if you’re an MBA-type) is the first challenge of implementing a social media campaign you can measure.

There are infinite things that can be measured when you’re talking about digital communication / transactions. It’s so tempting to go into bean-counter mode and just start measuring any metric that keeps going up (because up is good, right?) when what you need to do first and foremost is: figure out what success metrics translate easily into a business context for your organisation.

Some will see YongFook’s ideas as a way to promote social media without accountability. (Can’t find the right metrics? Then lower the bar to make less-meaningful metrics seem more meaningful.)

My take? Engagement marketing (and social media) are still largely in their infancy, and while I’m all for looking hard before diving into massively hyped media channels which (so far) lack any hint of ROI, I’m also aware of the value of an engaged customer.

While engagement often occurs via channels other than social media, both concepts face similar challenges, both in metrics and credibility.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

engagement marketing, engagement, social media, social media metrics, engagement metrics

It’s happened to most of us; we mention a brand somewhere on the Intertubes, and soon find ourselves on the receiving end of an email/blog post/twitter reply from the company.

It used to be a little spooky; now it’s fast becoming an expectation. Given the customer conversations happening right now on social media, this news was inevitable: hosted CRM powerhouse Salesforce.com just integrated Twitter functions into its “Service Cloud” product:

Salesforce.com lets you answer customer complaints on Twitter » VentureBeat

Most people on popular microblogging site Twitter (which just turned three) have probably seen customer service-type queries from other users — questions about how to make a product work, or complaints that it’s broken. I have even posted some complaints of my own. That’s one of the reasons companies like Google have created their own Twitter accounts, and its why Salesforce.com is adding Twitter integration to its customer service product, which it calls the Service Cloud.

This is the kind of integration that can only help make engagement via social media tenable in the business world – a social media force multiplier that might protect marketing & service budgets from the skyrocketing costs of monitoring and stuffing a myriad of social media channels.

Lowering barriers to customer engagement can only be a good thing – though we note the other barriers to engagement remain in place (corporatespeak, hype, indifference, inauthentic behavior, etc).

I like this move, but have to wonder why it’s still so damned hard to get two-way integration between email service providers and CRM solutions. One step at a time.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

engagement, engagement marketing, twitter, salesforce.com, twitter integration, service cloud

You know the fun’s over for any media channel when analysts start issuing reports about it, which is why Forrester’s new report – titled “Social media Playtime Is Over” – offers a distressingly adult perspective on social media (You can buy one for $750, refundable if you’re “not completely satisfied”).

Social media promises much, but lest we forget, the channels themselves are proving hard to monetize, and while some businesses are generating traffic and connecting with customers, the real ROI is harder to judge.

Some advocate a full-blown dive into social media, including Advertising Age columnist B.L. Ochman. She suggests corporations won’t make any headway in social media until they start investing in it – moving beyond experimentation into the realm of serious marketing:

Three-quarters of those surveyed who knew their budgets said they allowed for $100,000 or less for social media tools over a 12-month period, according to the report, written by Forrester analyst Jeremiah K. Owyang. And they are not integrating social media into their overall marketing strategy. Instead, they are “experimenting” with isolated tactics and hoping that they will take the place of long-term strategy.

Furthermore, Owyang notes, social media is more of an after-thought than a marketing line item. “45-percent of marketers say their social budgets are determined as needed and 23-percent say they scrape together funds from wherever they can find them.”

I’m not going to deny the utility nor the promise of social networks, but corporations are experimenting for a variety of reasons, one of which is this: all social media isn’t the same, and the verdict isn’t wholly in on which will perform best – especially if you’re not a Web 2.0 company selling a Web 2.0 product.

And some in the marketing department may not have forgotten Second Life – a prior “must-invest-in-heavily” social media virtual reality that ate online marketing budgets for lunch.

I’m hardly a social media Luddite: I’m advising a couple clients to dive into selected social media, though not at the expense of other media channels with proven ROI (like email, integrated blogs, etc). In that sense, it’s possible I could be accused of only “experimenting” with social media, but then, what’s wrong with that?

Did fully formed email programs spring from the earth in the first months after email became widely available?

Every media channel – regardless of buzz or the market cap of the technology provider – should undergo the same scrutiny:

• How does this further our business goals?
• How do we measure the results?
• Does our target audience (or existing customer base) use this channel?
• Do our customers want us to communicate this way?
• Do we have the internal capacity to fill this channel with content?
• What will we have to cut to make budget for this new channel?

These are not always easy questions to answer, especially for smaller businesses.

It’s clear that social media are here to stay, and that they provide powerful engagement opportunities for the right businesses. But should companies commit hundreds of thousands without some hope of a result?

The use of social media channels is being
accelerated by the recession, and those companies that “experimented” with the
media will have their answers in time for the recovery.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

social media, forrester, social media playtime is over, engagement, engagement marketing

Snickers candy bars headed for a nastly Snacklash? Possibly. In fact, the candy giant took sweetness and turned it kinda sour, and they do so like this:

• Snickers launches a new online effort based on the “Talk Some Snacklish” theme
• A Snickers bar spoof site appeared on the Internet (snckrz.com) that allowed visitors to place their own text into an online version of the Snickers Bar candy wrapper
• Apparently unamused, the manufacturers of Snickers (Mars) – the former Official Candy Bar of Engagement Principles – threatened to sue
• The “Snacklash” begins

The image of online disappointment: a shuttered snckrz.com

Sadly, we’ve gotta say that Engagement Principles fave candy bar Snickers missed a golden opportunity to engage with users around their ages-old (and yes, tasty) candy bar. It’s a good example of large companies trying engage on the Intertubes yet failing to recognize this one little truth:

The Creativity site suggested a “Snacklash” was headed Snicker’s way, and Mediabistro had this to say:

It’s the same old story – brand shirk the love of consumers in favor of control. Okay. Well, Snickers… if you wanted control, why not just co-opt Snckrz! and make it part of what Nick Parish from Creativity called the “pretty-but-obtuse” legitimate site?

A quick search of Twitter will turn up numerous tweets from people who loved Snckrz! Snickers better hope there isn’t some backlash in this decision to get the lawyers involved. Oh! I spoke too soon. Already, Twitters are having a reaction with responses like the image below or the newly created Snickers fail tag (#Snickersfail). Seriously. Snickers, I thought you were smarter than this?

After a couple decades working with corporate clients, I realize it’s hard to hand control over their hard-won brands to the Internet’s capricious masses. After all, nobody’s ever been pantsed by their boss in a crowded conference room for whipping the customer base back into line.

Still, Snickers should have recognized the downsides were minimal, yet the upside was fun – and yes, a handful more engaged buyers. No doubt Snckrz.com creators Poke media (a New York digital agency) are enjoying eating Snicker’s lunch, though the upper left-hand corner of their snckrz.com site includes a swipe that said “Terminated by these guys” and links to the Snickers site, a puzzling move which would drive traffic to the Snickers site – hardly punishment for the brand.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

snickers bar, snckrz.com, poke media, candy bar, spoof site, brand control, engagement

I write several blogs, and not necessarily from a viewpoint of “enhancing my online brand” or generating leads for my business.

That’s why I felt it necessary to shutter The Engagement Principles for a short time; my professional life didn’t allow the room to write the articles I find interesting, though it wouldn’t have been hard to continue posting “keyword rich” but intellectually pointless posts.

That’s not adding anything to the online conversation; it’s simply gaming Google.

What Teaching Teaches Us

I can’t say the space to write has magically reappeared, but after teaching an online marketing boot camp – to a bunch of micro-entrepreneurs who grasped the logic of engagement marketing very, very quickly – I realized it was time to beat the drum once again.

Engagement is a term much bandied about these days, though many now view it as simply a measure of how engaged someone is around a particular site or campaign.

By contrast, my definition of “Engagment Marketing” remains focused on brand equity, long-term connection, and the lifetime value of engaged customers.

As I explained it to my class of eager entrepreneurs, I’m an experienced direct response copywriter, so I’m perfectly capable of selling their customers a widget, for which they’d make a widget’s profit.

Yet, if I can successfully engage customers – bind them to the brand around shared passions, values and interests – then I just potentially made them a lifetime of widget profits.

They understand that logic just fine.

Engagement is Personal

Most of the entrepreneurs in my class are not in the content-generation business, and reject the idea their primary goal in starting their business was to sit in front a PC and lard the Internet with SEO content or manage huge keyword lists.

Most of these entrenpreneurs are enamored with simple, proven channels like email/e-newsletter lists – which are rapidly merging with newer media channels like blogs and social media.

Show them the flowchart on the whiteboard, and they instantly see the beauty of leveraging content across multiple media channels, and providing return channels of communication for those customers and prospects in the process of engaging with their brand.

In simple terms, I showed them The Engagement Principles in (crude) graphic form (my drawing skills beggar belief), and they showed me it made perfect sense.

I plan to fire up a couple posts every month on the Engagement Principles; a grievously low article count in the age of “publish daily or die” content generators, but a reasonable schedule for reasonable articles from a working professional.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

engagement, engagement marketing, marketing, online marketing boot camp

When I posted about Bravo TV’s engagement-rich Web site, my request for an interview went unanswered, so a few questions went unanswered.

Fortunately, some of my questions were answered in a DM News interview with Bravo’s Lisa Hsia – Senior VP of new media, Bravo.

It was a short interview (and worth a couple minutes of your time). Two key questions revolved around emerging technology and the value Bravo TV places on engagement:

Q: What strategy does Bravo take with emerging technology?

A: The way I look at it, we’re not only an entertainment company, we’re in the engagement business. We’re increasingly having success monetizing engagement. For the Project Runway mobile fan club, we had 92% participation while normal engagement is 1%–2%. We also did vot­ing with cable remotes [for Top Chef] with Time Warner and Dish Network. With Time Warner, we had 26% participation. In the beginning it was just an experi­ment. Now, sponsors come on board because they want the engagement our users have.

Q: How does this engagement add value for advertisers?

A: With Bravo’s Info Frame [an interactive panel allowing viewers to participate in polls, games and chats during programming], the consumer is interacting during the program as well as during the commercials themselves. The advertisers can also interact and, presumably, if they’re engaging during the program, they’re going to engage during advertisements.

The numbers repeated in the first answer would make any marketing exec (or ad salesman) sit up a little straighter.

Yet the second answer (How does this engagement add value for advertisers?) is conspicuous mostly for its lack of numbers.

At this point, engagement is hard to quantify, which is why so many organizations are standing on the sidelines.

While I had criticisms of Bravo TV’s site (it’s confusing and hard to navigate), you have to applaud them for taking risks – and enjoying the payoffs.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler

bravo, bravo tv, engagement, engagement marketing, dmnews

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This little gem from American Copywriter caught my eye; it relates how a hit TV show is using tweets – ostensibly sent by the show’s characters – to engage the viewing audience:

In addition, each profile links to the official AMC site, and there does seem to be some highly subtle show promotion. For instance, last Sunday morning, well before the episode aired, @don_draper tweeted: “Wishing I didn’t have to spend most of my Sunday at the office.” It was later revealed in the show, of course, that Draper had to head into the city to work on the American Airlines pitch. Nice.

I often say engagement marketing is about connecting with the shared values and passions of an audience. Nowhere is it written those doing the connecting have to be real, and this is a shining example.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

Landing pages have long been the darling of the online world; they continue the dialog begun when a prospect clicked on an ad or link. Yet landing pages are rarely truly interactive — one of the cornerstones of true customer engagement.

It’s precisely the capacity for reader engagement that’s driving microsites to the forefront — and made them the darling of online marketers.

From a recent post on emarketer.com

If you build a microsite, they will come, they will engage and you can get the data to prove it.

That is the main finding of a newly released Keynote Competitive Research study conducted in October 2007. The company tracked reactions of consumers planning to buy an automobile within the next six months as they interacted with microsites for various car models, including the Toyota Yaris.

Keynote said the Yaris microsite demonstrated that "the more engaged people are with product and brand microsites, the more satisfied they will be and conversion rates will be higher than for people less engaged."

Engagement metrics remain hard to define, though most vendors seem to be cobbling together a mix of standards, including time on site, pages viewed, messages left, etc.

What’s fast becoming universal among brands is the desire for true engagement — and the recognition that quality content is the cornerstone of that engagement.

Microsites are often better suited to delivering engagement style content — and in engaging prospects in a conversation — hence the rapid growth.

User Driven vs Seller Driven

I’d suggest the success of microsites in a Web 2.0 world is largely a matter of user control; landing pages force a narrative on the reader, while microsites are user-driven, and can offer elements like two-way conversation, social networking features, etc.

In fact, the emarketing post cites a 2007 Marketing Sherpa survey on Viral Marketing Tactics that generated great results and — surprise — microsites came out on top (highest "Great" results with 37%; lowest "Dismal" results at 10%).

It’s a common journalistic tool to end a story with a compelling quote, and this is ours: Keynote Senior VP Don Aoki said

"With interactive advertising, the consumer must be presented compelling content to draw him or her into the interaction. The consumer must be engaged," he said.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.