Non-Line Blogging

I was recently asked at short notice to stand in for a speaker on Mobile Marketing at the Central and Eastern Europe Digital Marketing Conference in Budapest.  As luck would have it, the speaker's table had a bottle of Pepsi on it and gave me an extra 10 minutes worth of content.  On the bottle label was a QR Code and so I talked enthusiastically about how this technology can drive traffic to web sites for free.

In short, a QR code can hold a huge amount of information but all most of us need it to do is carry a url.  Then, anybody with a smart phone that has the software installed can take a picture of the code and open up our destination site.  Cost of creation of QR Code?  Nothing.  Cost of printing on label?  Nothing. Value of free traffic to your site? Priceless!

I've been following the development of QR codes for several years and whilst they are big in Japan, they do not really seem to have caught on in Western marketing culture...until this morning.  There I am, munching on my super-food muesli flicking through the daily paper and out pops a full page display ad with...a QR Code!  

To be honest, I'm not wildly excited about what Siemens has to say about "Climate Change and Energy Supply", but they did take me from an off-line display ad to a mobile web site in seconds, for no effort.  I'm also just a little more engaged.  And I think Siemens is a bit cooler than before thanks to my multi-channel customer journey (how sad am I?)

So, what are the opportunities for QR codes?  Well, they should probably augment all ad copy that currently just has a url...why ask people to go to a long site address when you can whisk them there in seconds by mobile? That means we can deliver them to deep url's and not just easy to remember/type urls. 

How about store windows taking people to a "Voucher download" page?  Or they should be on all direct mail collateral. And packaging, and exhibition stands...and posters.  Business cards?  Company Cars?!

Then there is the art and science of building landing pages;  how can we harvest personal data from the visit?  What should be the call to action? How do we measure success?  In truth, the volumes from this activity will not be overwhelming, but for the tech savvy segment of your prospect pool this may be cool enough (and easy enough) to tip them over into becoming customers. 

So, we've a long way to go with QR Codes, but what an exciting journey.   And for those of you wanting to play with me in the land of QR, here is all you need to begin:

• Create your QR Code web url - it's free and easy at this site
• Or if you want a Vcard - Nokia have a jolly clever tool for that (accept their T's and C's before use)
• Scan it using QR Code smart phones - here is Nokia's range
• Or download the software

That's it - just to get you started, here's my QR Business card.  And just for the record, even I'm not geeky or sad enough to have my Facebook url printed on a T-shirt, but if that's your bag, this company will do that for you.  Happy QR Coding!  

I can retire a happy man.  After 4 years of effort, my humble one-man band site is top in Google for the most important search term in my competitive market that is full of search savvy marketers.  Googling "digital marketing training" in the UK or globally yields Non-Line Marketing as top banana. 

Of course that statement comes with a raft of qualifications.  First up, I may not be there tomorrow (as I wasn't there yesterday), and I am not even there all the time today.  Maybe Google is giving everybody 15 minutes of search fame to keep us happy in these recessionary times, but in truth it is seeing whether people validate their search algorithm by clicking on my link.   Second, it has taken 4 years to navigate to the top of the page by following all the usual tips about key word density and consistency and linking and so on.  Thirdly, I built the site 4 years ago with a clunky design package and it's looking a dated site that doesn't render well in today's larger screen resolutions automatically, so my quality score will suffer as people click back to the search page.  And also, the "Description" meta tag I crafted is not being pulled from my clunky design and so I am not compelling enough to encourage more clicks.

Anyhow, for the moment I am up there with the Big Boys, looking down on the IDM, E-Consultancy, CIM and even the mighty Dave Chaffey!  But I won't be there for long. 

So in the meantime I have a new site ready to roll - I've been building it over the past few months and its got all the Web 2.0 bells and whistles every digital consulting Johnny needs..shiny buttons, drop shadows, acres of lovely white space.  Trouble is, once I switch to the new site I'm probably going to wave goodbye to my new found "Topagoogle" status.

Yes, the tech brigade say that it is easy to use the right re-directs to carry all the old stuff to the new, (here is Dave Chaffey's thoughts on the 301/303 debate), but I've just seen what has happened to E-consultancy...they launched their lovely new site a few weeks ago and have dropped out of the search rankings for key training phrases.  Two months ago e-consultancy was top for all digital training searches but the new site has let pip-squeaks like me into the rankings. 

So, in the immortal words of The Clash, "Should I stay or Should I go".  Stay, with a naff site, or go, and lose my "Top Banana" status? 

You'll know I went when I drop off the edge of the search cliff! 

Hats off to the team at Butlins On-Line.  During the "peak" booking time for wholesome family fun it must have driven them mad to see their site fall over.  But, rather than do nothing at all, they amended the Google Ad copy to drive people to the call centre.  The response time for Google Ads from creation to serving seems to be around 10 - 20 minutes these days and that gives us all fantastic scope to respond to opportunities - good and bad.

Now wouldn't it be even more fun if they could drive people to the Butlins call centre when the Pontins or Center Parcs  sites were down, or is that revelling in other people's misfortune a little too much?

Now and again a search engine results page is lit up for me by a company doing something smart with adwords.  I think it's a given that we all need to know and love Google, and most companies with an established digital presence put search strategy near the top of their list of priorities.  But this tends to be the big, regular search stuff, and teams work on building and maintaining tens of thousands of PPC campaigns.

The speed of delivery of digital marketing offers a new approach to "campaign management".  You need a maverick, free-thinking approach to search marketing, scouring weather forecasts, news headlines and the mass media for "angles" to position your products or services.   Here's what I mean: Google Trends shows a direct correlation between the "Da Vinci code" film launch in July 2006 and searches for Rosslyn Chapel, where some of the scenes were filmed.  You can do the same for "Lyme Regis" and "The French Lieutenant's Woman", or "Alnwick Castle" and "Harry Potter".  We watch, we like, we search. 

Armed with insights like this we can tap into the "zeitgeist" (every blog has to use that word once a month - it's in the contract) and anticipate search demand.

Being of Welsh blood I take an unhealthy interest in how the land of my fathers positions itself in the digital world.  On a recent visit to West Wales the local paper was having a pop at the national tourist board, Visit Wales, for ignoring one of the biggest marketing opportunities to hit Wales since the arrival of the railways. "The Edge of Love" film released next week is set to be this year's blockbuster about the life and loves of Dylan Thomas, and showcase beautiful Welsh countryside, towns and coastline.  Throughout the world fingers will be tapping the "The Edge of Love" into Google to plan their pilgrimage to the beach where Sienna Miller and Keira Knightly frolicked.  So, as the search terms begin to disappear in the top right hand corner of google's graph, where's all the Visit Wales marketing support?

Oh Dear oh Dear.  The PPC search area is as empty as Traeth Gwyn beach in mid-February.  And just in case you wonder what all the fuss will be about, this is a view of New Quay from Traeth Gwyn beach, where Dylan Thomas lived for a few years in the 1940's.

As a thank you for letting me use this photo I will dedicate my own PPC campaign to driving traffic to this bloke's site. 

And just to prove the power of blogging...hats off to Elle for getting a campaign up!

Come on Visit Wales...it's that easy!!!

Yahoo's board, according to Carl Icahn, is "asleep at the wheel" and under pressure to resign en masse because they can't come up with any ideas to out-smart Google.  Meanwhile, Facebook are one of the few sites to knock up something quick and easy we can all play with - Facebook Ads.

I could try and convince you that you can create engagement by dynamically inserting the Facebooker's photo in your ad's...

...but that only happens when you look like a credit crunch model.

With the mischevious tag-line of "Reach your Customers before they start Searching" they have built a wonderful little ad serving suite.  First up you have a super AJAX-enabled count engine that gives on-the-fly segmentations.  They'll help you identify (if you so chose) the 18-30 year old surf dudes living in Aberystwyth.  You then have the option of CPT or CPC and frankly who wouldn't go straight for the performance option?

And that's the clever bit.  Facebook have out-smarted Google with their demographic/behavioural Content network ad serving and put micro-targeting into the hands of every marketer at an acceptable cost.  So, if I'm promoting a clearance sale at my Aberystwyth surf shop I could knock up an ad and keep hitting these Facebookers for free until somebody clicks.  And yes, there are no more than 150 characters to weave your magic but you do get A PICTURE to add to the impact.

I did a tactical, local, seasonal campaign for a client that generated 8,000 impressions and a handful of clicks for a whopping $1.60...about 90 pence all in.  Although the ad's are hardly right up there in the "engagement" world you could always link to a coupon or pop in a unique phone number and measure the non-line impact.  And with so few ad players out there I recon the cost per click will be really competitive compared to CPC display deals on other sites.  Surely too good to be true?

A case of "Reach your Customers on Facebook before somebody else does"