Guerrilla Insight for Authors: Split Run Testing

Split Run Testing
If you are a webpreneur, split testing is a definite recommendation. Not only it increases sales but also lets go of unnecessary graphics and copy. A ..

New Marketing Thinking Required for Second Life?

Mobil Avenue accuses me of 20th century marketing thinking. I'm not quite sure what he has in mind, but it seems that my Second Life posts ticked off some people.

Now, don't get me wrong, I see alot of development potential in virtual worlds, but Second Life as it is simply does not cut it.

I won't go into the details again, but the sheer lack of economy of scales shows that something is wrong when you compare the investments in Second Life and the actual virtual world penetration. Not to mention the difficult user interface.

Second Life is a good beginning, but virtual worlds have a far way to go before they deserve to be treated as seriously as some are treating them today. Yes, Second Life should certainly be treated as a marketing/communications playground, but not as a high importance marketing channel.

If you want to call this 20th century thinking, go ahead. It is. As are economies of scale, profitability, sales conversion, cost per order and other business "relics".

And as you'll notice, 20th century thinking still works, even in 2007. We've all heard stories of the demise of advertising, the death of PR, the death of e-mail, the death of postal direct mail and so on ... but they're all alive, well and kicking still today, and will remain so.

Actually, intrusive direct response TV advertising is still one of the most effective tools to generate sales. And it gives you more bang for the buck than almost any other marketing channel, including online.

Do I like this? No. I'd love to believe that the internet is the alpha and omega of marketing. But it's not. It's the key connector, but not the key driver. That's the way things are, and as markters we need to employ 20th century thinking and use what works best ... and the numbers tell us that.

But this doesn't mean we shouldn't play and test. Quite on the contrary.

OK, this conversation is getting somewhat beyond the original topic, and it's quite possible I'm not even getting what Mobil Avenue is trying to say:)

And please don't get me started on 3D virtual webstores ...

Of course, I might be wrong. And if I am, I'll be the first to change my stripes the next day. It's what marketers do. If a new thing comes up and works better than what you're doing, change. But every change first demand proof. Unless you're just testing ... because when you're testing, the rules of the game change.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.

The NewsGator Interview: RSS in the Enterprise - Manage Internal Information More Easily

In part 3 of the RSS interview with Greg Reinacker of NewsGator find out how Enterprise RSS makes information management easier within a corporation.

What will happen in the RSS space in 2007, for marketers and business?
Will RSS become integrated into every enterprise application? How will that change how information is used?
Will RSS improve information management within an organization?
What challenges do RSS management present to IT departments in larger organizations?
Will centralized RSS tools help solve the internal information management crisis?
What is Attention XML and how will it help you get more of the content you need and less of the content that is not relevant specifically to you?
Are smart RSS Readers only for corporations, or can consumers also take advantage?
What are NewsGator's plans for 2007?

Click here to listen to the interview [MP3; 13 min.]

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Amazon.com Discussions and Reviews via RSS

I have to apologise to Amazon for missing on two of their RSS content delivery options, which I previously missed.

Sorry guys, and thank you for the heads up.

1. Product Discussions
Most Amazon.com product discussions are now available also as RSS feeds. An excellent way of keeping track of the conversations surrounding your favorite products, and certainly something more websites should implement ... especially those that provide content that people are pashionate about.

The first one that comes to mind is TV.com and their community show reviews.

2. Customer Reviews by Author
Like a product reviewer? Subscribe to their Amazon.com reviews RSS feed.

Quality of Online Content is King Once Again
Professional videos draw the ad dollars

The launch of Google's in video ads brought some interesting facts to the fore - it's not the flushing felines and lip-syncing college kids of user-generated video that supposedly draws so any eyeballs that got the ad dollars. Marketers are more interested in paying customers than a slew of eyeballs just there to see a weird video. Go figure!

"There's a huge audience built around user-generated content but no evidence that it is a profitable business," said Peter Hoskins, who recently succeeded ManiaTV's founder, Drew Massey, as CEO.

Marketers are looking for quality content says David Verklin, Carat Americas CEO and ManiaTV board member. "YouTube has hundreds of channels of professionally produced content. Simply put, user-created content is being held to ever higher and higher standards."

Increasingly, user-generated videos have to compete for attention with professional, premium content, reports Ad Age. A music video from Avril Lavigne is beginning to approach Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance" as YouTube's most viewed video.

What does this mean for your PR campaigns? You do need to tap into the vast audiences that are watching video online. But you need to produce excellent quality content and it does not have to break the budget. .

In the end, it's the quality of your content that will get the result that actually affects your bottom line..

Using RSS Radars in B2B CRM

RSS Radars are not just a tool to help you enrich your website content and allow you to easily conduct business intelligence, but can also be used as a B2B Customer Relationship Management tool to help you maintain customer loyalty and provide your customers with some additional added value.

Just recently I received an e-mail from David Koopmans of Mokum Marketing, who gave me the idea for this post.

David's idea is simple:

Tag articles of interest to your customers using a service like Diigo or Del.icio.us
Provide them with an RSS feed to deliver them the articles as they are updated

This is how David sees the usefulness of such an application:
"The idea is very attractive though; in B2B we often manage a relatively small number of relationships, but they are deep and we want to make them deeper."

But, there are two problems:

Tagging the articles using a public service like Diigo or Del.icio.us would make the feeds publicly available, making the service less value due to lack of uniqueness, as also noted by David
Tagging relevant articles every day takes time ... time that busy B2B marketers usually don't have, especially if you want to cater a tag-based RSS feed for each of your clients

This is where RSS Radars can come in, enabling you to aggregate dozens or hundreds of RSS feeds, filter them for the relevant keywords to get only the most relevant content for a specific client, and provide that client with his own customized RSS feed, using a service like MySyndicaat.com or pipes.yahoo.com.

Plus, using .htaccess you can easily password protect each feed for each individual client.

More details in the 2007 edition of the RSS e-book:)

How Google's Acquisition of FeedBurner Will Change RSS Marketing

While the original plan for the RSS Diary blog was leaving on hiatus until the 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book is done, the FeedBurner acquisition by Google is a story just to important to pass up ... especially all the implications it might bring into the world of RSS Advertising, and RSS Marketing as a whole as well.

So, yes. FeedBurner, a leading RSS metrics and RSS advertising company was just acquired by Google. Finally confirmed after weeks of speculation. I won't go into the details of the acquisition, as you can read more about it at the FeedBurner blog and just by following the news at Google News.

Here, we'll take a look at the implications this brings to the world of RSS Marketing. Just my predictions of course:)

1. RSS Metrics Will Finally Become Integrated With Web Metrics

In my book, all marketing/communications channels should be judged using the same metrics, such as conversions, cost-per-order, cost-per-subscriber, sales etc.

Although you could already do all of this with RSS, it required some tinkering.

But, as FeedBurner gets assimilated into Google Analytics, tracking the key marketing metrics should become a breeze, giving everyone access to crucial internet optimization data.

2. RSS Metrics Moving Closer to the Mainstream

With RSS Metrics being integrated directly into Google Analytics (which I'm sure will happen very soon), marketers might finally start actually measuring their RSS feeds.

Means better RSS Marketing, finally.

3. RSS Advertising Going CPC

Although FeedBurner is cautions to provide any details about how their CPM pricing model might change with the integration of their ad services into Google, I'm quite certain that RSS advertising will move the way of cost-per-click.

Means less revenues for RSS feed publishers, but better ROI for you, the advertiser.

4. RSS Advertising Moving Closer to the Mainstream

RSS Advertising will finally reach the mainstream, utilizing Google's massive advertiser database.

Prices will go up, and RSS content monetization will again start becoming the talk at industry events.

On the plus side, it also means Google will be able to attract more RSS feed publishers, meaning more RSS ad inventory for you. Your RSS advertising reach potential is about to explode, finally enabling you to reach the masses using RSS Advertising.

5. Trouble for Other RSS Advertising Companies

I love Pheedo, another leading RSS Metrics and RSS Advertising company, but the FeedBurner acquisition makes me wonder what's in store for them as Google starts pushing RSS advertising to their massive database of advertisers, especially as part of an integrated online advertising service.

It's certainly not the end of other RSS Advertising companies, but they might all soon see themselves transforming from RSS ad networks to RSS media planning & buying consultants.

Which would be a shame, especially considering the advancements in RSS Advertising developed by Pheedo.

6. Better Targeting for Google AdWords Advertisers (We Wish!)

Advertiser demand seems to be growing quicker than the inventory offered by Google.

The obvious choice for Google (in addition of course to increasing ad inventory through additional reach, media expansion through the content network, and expansion to new ad channels, like RSS and banner inventories) is to offer better targeting, for a premium price.

As a marketer, I clearly want to place my ads in front of the most relevant prospects. Keyword targeting is OK, but adding behavioral on top of that introduces another filtering element to my media planning, enabling me to really pin-point the users I want to see my ads.

How about displaying search ads only to people who have already visited my website, but haven't made a purchase? Google AdWords and Google Analytics integration could offer exactly this.
How about displaying search ads only to people that respond to marketing content banners on other websites? Integrating Google AdWords with one of the latest Google acquisitions, DoubleClick, can get us exactly this.
Of course, I might also want to target my ads to people who are subscribed to X e-mail newsletter. What do you know, Google already has that information through their Gmail service.
And then, how about displaying search ads only to people who are subscribing to other RSS feeds about RSS marketing? Integrating Google AdWords with FeedBurner would make this possible.
Now just take these concepts, put them all together, and expand them to banner advertising, feed advertising and any other online ad channel Google develops/acquires in the future.

This may either be science fiction or Google's actual long-term masterplan. As more advertising budgets rush to the internet, available quality ad inventory will continue shrinking.

By introducing such targeting, integrating the metric and capabilities of all of their properties, Google could come as close as possible to total ad targeting, the holy grail of marketing we are all striving towards.

Things will get much more interesting ... and soon.

If I were an ad agency, I'd start developing a targeting department, focusing on targeted media buying.

Viral Marketing
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Content is King on a Website
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Bryan Eisenberg RSS Interview, part 2: RSS Marketing Best Practices

What works best in RSS marketing? How are RSS subscribers different than e-mail subscribers? RSS publishing best practices if you want to sell?

These and other practical questions are all revealed in the 2nd part of the RSS interview with Bryan Eisenberg. Without doubt, this is one of the best and most practical RSS marketing interviews we've done so far.

In part 1 of the Bryan Eisenberg RSS interview we focused on how the GrokDotCom.com is going beyond traditional RSS Radars by employing intelligent content aggregation tools, instead of relying just on contextual filtering, and what kind of results they are achieving.

In part 2 of the interview we move beyond RSS Radars to their overall RSS marketing strategy.

In this interview find out about ...

1. How RSS subscribers are different from e-mail subscribers and why?

2. How to sell products through content-rich RSS feeds?

3. Do RSS subscribers mind seeing product promotions in your feeds?

4. When to publish your latest RSS content to get the most links from other websites and most readership?

5. What's the right RSS publishing frequency for promotional content?

6. Why branding your RSS feed is important and how to do it?

Click here to listen to the MP3 file [8:33 minutes; 2 MB]

Link popularity and tools for link building
Link popularity and link quality are important because all search engines consider them as a part of their ranking algorithms, says Puneet Mehrotra ..

Guerrilla Insight for Authors

Friday, September 14, 2007

Split Run Testing

1. RSS Metrics Will Finally Become Integrated With Web Metrics

2. RSS Metrics Moving Closer to the Mainstream

3. RSS Advertising Going CPC

4. RSS Advertising Moving Closer to the Mainstream

5. Trouble for Other RSS Advertising Companies

6. Better Targeting for Google AdWords Advertisers (We Wish!)

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