Want to Measure Print Advertising Effectiveness?

I fully realize that the media landscape has changed radically and although I strongly do not believe "Print Is Dead" (ironically enough, some of these cries are from the print media themselves), I do realize that print media is one piece of a media plan that contains many more distribution channels than used to be contained in a typical plan.

Print is not dead. In fact in a recent audience study, we learned that 69% of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing's total audience regularly reads print b2b magazines. Although print is not dead, it is more difficult to get basic and quick metrics to gauge whether or not an ad is resonating. The Great Recession caused most companies to focus their spending on only activities where ROI (or professed ROI) could be measured. I get this and honestly don't disagree with it.

I have had numerous disagreements with clients and colleagues on what is being measured, how metrics are collected and the priority of importance assigned to the metrics.

Many claim that print advertising effectiveness cannot be measured. I agree that it is more difficult to measure interest (especially casual/initial interest) generated from a print ad than from a web ad. In fact, I have pondered this issue for a lot of years.

But, some tools and approaches for measuring print ads are coming into focus.

1) I am currently reading a book entitled "How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of 'Intangibles' in Business," by Douglas Hubbard. Stay tuned as this book is offering some interesting insights on how to approach measuring things that appear at first blush to be unmeasurable or at least very complex to measure.

2) QR Codes. While QR Codes are not the be all and end all, they are a tool that can offer opportunity for direct measurement. Be careful not to write off an ad...deeming it ineffective...if you don't get dozens and dozens of people taking additional engagement steps via your QR code in your print ad. But, there is an opportunity here and there are approaches that make sense and are effective and approaches that do not make sense.

"Five Tips for Implementing a Successful QR Code Campaign" is a really well written piece that offers some great advice and offers some comments that will help you to establish and frame expectations.

3) Vanity/Tracking URLs in print ads. This is also not a fool-proof approach by any means, but it is a tool. Most companies have been using vanity URLs in print ads for some time now, but many companies do not use the approach as strategically as they could. Promoting the content that can be accessed via the vanity URL within your print ad is definitely advised. What are prospective customers going to find if they visit the page? - a video, a calculator of some kind, a white paper, a handbook....??? Give them a reason to visit.

For the foreseeable future, print advertising has role and a place within B2B marketing communications plans. The reason is simple...69% of your customers and prospects (a much larger percentage that is doing any other one single activity) are reading B2B print publications. To say that print advertising does not have a place because it "can't be measured" is both untrue and results in marketing programs that are not nearly as effective as they should be.

Make a comment below to let me know what you think.

Print Media Blending With Digital Media Via Augmented Reality Approaches

Print and digital media have been working to effectively integrate for some time now. Like any new movement, new direction...it takes time for equilibrium and a new reality to be established. There have been stops and starts to be sure, but it is happening.

Print media as a whole is not going away, just as radio did not go away as TV became an entrenched media source for America and for the world. Radio did not go away, but it changed radically. Families stopped sitting around their radios in their living rooms starting blankly into space conjuring fantastic images of the Lone Ranger and his adventurers. America started sitting around their living rooms staring at images being delivered for them on their television sets. Radio became more music and news centric rather than featuring soap operas and serial adventures. This was a radically media transformation that happened within a fairly short period of time and we are experiencing a similar print/digital media transition.

Augmented reality experiences being promoted via print and other traditional media mechanisms is one example of how the blending of the old and the new is shaping. Despite all of the snappy technology, ultimately media consumers will decide what is value and worth their time and what is not. So as with any epic transitions, only time will tell.

But as smart marketers and media professionals we need to watch, listen and strategically experiment. The one thing that is certain for marketers is that this print/media transition will not conclude, then stay fairly stable for 50 years as the radio/television transition did. The changes will continue to be fast and constant, so buckle in and enjoy the long, fun and constantly changing ride.

Just two recent examples of the print/digital transition - Starbucks and Commonwealth Bank are using traditional and non-digital vehicles to promote high-tech augmented reality apps.

Starbucks to Launch Augmented Reality Campaign

Commonwealth Bank Augmented Reality App Promoted Via Newspaper Ads

Another Great Resource--Marketing Podcasts From Leading Internet Marketing Consultants

Jay Berkowitz, CEO of Ten Golden Rules features tips to business owners about the leading internet marketing and online advertising trends, including search engine marketing and Web 2.0.

Acccess Ten Golden Rules podcasts

Recent Episodes Include:

• Jay Berkowitz and prominent Twitter Rock Stars Warren Whitlock, Gail Goodwin and @Iconic88 discuss personal branding

• Meet internet marketing Rock Stars including Google’s Albert Chen, Mitch Joel, Author Six Pixel of Separation, Craig Agranoff, Founder of WorstPizza, Shawn Rorick, Author / Past Director of Marketing – Cirque du Soleil, Murray Izenwasser, Mike Monahan Cruises One, Alex Harris from eDiets.com and AlexDesigns.com and Chris Thornton from Definition 6 in Atlanta.

• Meet Posterous Co-Founder Sachin Agarwal, Optimizing Video for the Search Engines, 10 Top Twitter Stories, Web 2010: Discover the 10 Trends Defining Your Business Future, Micro Communications, Mission Pie, ‘The Girl with the Golden Disk’.

Acccess Ten Golden Rules podcasts

B2B Lead Generation Gone Wild. B2B Lead Generation Gone Bad.

It should come as no surprise that lead generation has become an important force within B2B marketing. In fact, there is a good chance that lead generation efforts are one of the predominant elements within your own marketing plan.

But, what is lead generation really? Frankly, I have become increasingly concerned by some of what I see going on in the pharmaceutical b2b marketing/media space.

Effective and ethical lead generation programs require an offer—some in the digital marketing world call the offer a Unique Value Proposition. In order to capture a prospect’s contact information, you have to give them something. Examples of things you can give include: access to piece of high-level content (white paper, webinar, podcast, etc), a free product sample, a discount, a free consultation session. Your offer is solely limited by your creativity, but the value of your offer needs to be in line with the information you are asking for.

People guard their e-mail addresses and phone numbers carefully and justifiably so. Requiring full contact information to download a product brochure is not an equitable exchange. However, requiring full contact information to access a white paper, a non-commercial webcast - a piece of content that educates and helps someone solve a problem, is an equitable exchange.

I believe lead generation should be transparent. By this, I mean that it should be clear to the user that they are giving X company their contact information in exchange for access to Y deliverable. Enabling registration forms with cookies is great so that repeat visitors do not have to enter their information every time they want to download a piece of your content. But, a cookied registration form still makes it obvious to the visitor that they are offering their contact information.

I am not a tremendous fan of registration-based B2B industry websites as most of these sites do not require registration for a specific download. When registered users select a piece of content to download, they do not have to submit a registration form because the site knows who they are. Although these sites may not violate acceptable privacy policies, I believe that they count on visitors clicking away not realizing that they are providing a company a lead for every piece of content they access.

These sites are sometimes able to give large quantities of “leads” to their advertisers and the advertisers are generally unaware of the very passive action the visitor took to provide the “lead.” Although, I generally do not like a site registration approach to lead generation for industry sites, I would be comfortable with this approach for a specific company’s site if done in a thoughtful manner.

The big disagreement, no make that a huge disagreement, I have with many publishers right now is that many are giving “clicks as leads” and an increasing number of publishing companies are giving “looks as leads.” The analytics and behavior of specific visitors/audience members is quite detailed for e-newsletter subscribers and registered website users. For instance, I can access the specific individuals and their full contact information for anyone who clicks on any link (ad or editorial) within any of our e-newsletters. The same holds true for registered members of our websites. And our analytics technology allows us to identify specific individuals just looking (not even clicking) on specific content areas via “hot spot” technology.

However, I firmly believe that it is a form of identity theft to give this information to our advertisers. I do not and will not do this to our readers. Many of our readers are very loyal and without an audience we don't have much of a business...why would I steal from the very people who allow our business to prosper? And I will not fill our clients’ CRM systems with ill-gotten data.

We all have different views on business ethics and this is my line in the sand on this issue. Serving contextual ads or ads based on past behavior can be of tremendous value to the reader and is a tactic I support and utilize. Giving individuals' contact information without it being transparent to the reader that they are giving their contact information is a tactic I do not support and do not utilize. Period.

A “click” is not a lead and a “look” certainly is not a lead. Eventually, I think there could be federal regulation to keep publishers from doing this kind of thing. However for now, I wonder if we can keep the Feds out of this issue and just do the right thing? Can we apply the Golden Rule to our B2B marketing strategies and tactics? Most of us do not want our identities stolen. Why, then, would we do this to our customers and prospects?

Read Pharmaceutical Manufacturing's Digital Pledge to our audience.

Top Spam Words and Phrases--Updated April 2010

The following is a list of the top 80 words and phrases common to business-to-business media identified to trigger spam filters. This list was updated in April of 2010. At the end of this list are spam triggers specific to Microsoft Outlook.

In addition to these words triggering e-mail spam filters, use of these phrases within web pages can negatively effect SEO/SEM efforts.

Finally, from our understanding Google can now (to some extent at least) read words within photos. Therefore, these words/phrases should be avoided within photos and other graphics within digital media efforts.

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Microsoft Outlook: Spam Words To Avoid In Your Emails (2/10)

First 8 characters of From are digits
Subject contains “advertisement”
Body contains “money back ”
Body contains “cards accepted”
Body contains “removal instructions”
Body contains “extra income”
Subject contains “!” AND Subject contains “$”

Marketing Communications Talent Needed Now More Than Ever

I recently finished reading “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis (I really do not read ultra slowly and I did start reading this book a several weeks ago-other reading temporarily usurped this book’s place in the queue).

As I read this book. I had many “ah ha” moments. I do not believe Mr. Jarvis’ book contains all of the answers—it is a book designed to stimulate thought, not a Ouija board.

The seeds were planted for the changes we are now experiencing 15 years or so ago, but it has really been the last handful of years that the world of media has been turned on its head. Every type of media from television, newspapers, magazines, books, movies, music….the list goes on and on, has been forever changed.

B2B media has been far from immune. And an improving/recovered economy will not bring new life and prosperity to a forever changed and constantly changing landscape. Those merely waiting for the economy to recover so that we can return to “the way things were,” will be sorely disappointed.

However, in a media landscape that has radically changed, I find comfort in the reminder that as long as there is more than one supplier for a given product or service (in other words, as long as there is competition), marketing, marketing communications and advertising will exist. As long as competition or choice exists, product, service and solution providers will work to establish themselves as the products/solutions of choice.

In other words, as long as choice exists, marketers will strive to change the behavior of non-customers. And, changing behavior of non-customers or motivating continuation of desired behavior amongst existing customers has been the core goal of marketing and advertising for decades. If we are Coke, we want to change the behavior of Pepsi drinkers. If we are Thermo Scientific, we probably want to change, at least to a degree, the behavior of Bruker customers. If we are Emerson Process Management, we certainly want to change some of the behaviors of Rockwell customers.

So as marketing, marketing communications and advertising professionals, we can rest assured that there is an ongoing need for our craft. However, the question is, are we going to update our thinking, strategies and tactics to take advantage of and to survive in the new marketing and media landscape? This is the magic question in my mind.

My Experiment with Google AdSense

I am fascinated by all things Google. Google has reinvented the world as we know it in many ways and has made some extraordinarily smart moves. I am particularly fascinated by Google’s efforts to get to know us as individuals, to predict our needs and to predict what might interest us. Given that the majority of their revenues (just under $22 billion in 2008) are achieved by Google AdWords pay-per-click sales, their entire business model is based on predicting as accurately as possible which ads, which vendors and which information might interest us. Google continues to get smarter…to know us better while staying within the bounds of acceptable privacy practices.

I write three blogs—this blog as well as two blogs in which I address interests, opinions and thoughts outside the context of my professional life. I am now permitting Google ads to be served on all three blogs.

No, I do not envision getting rich via blogging. And no, I have no plans to quit my day job. Rather, I am interested in following the types of ads that are served. As traffic continues to grow on my blogs, I am interested to observe to what extent Google gets to know my audience. Quite possibly, Google will get to know my audiences more quickly than I do.

It will be a fun experiment and maybe within twelve months or so a check large enough to take my husband out to dinner might roll in from Mountain View, California.


This Wikipedia article offers a very good overview of how the Google AdSense program works.

Marketing Profs: The Three Most Popular Social Networks for Business (and Why You Should Use Them)

This article offers a very good basic overview of the three largest business social networks: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

I am active on all three networks; however, at this point I use Facebook for personal connections and my Twitter activity is far from regular. LinkedIn I find extroidinarily useful for a wide variety of professional networking, sourcing, idea and information sharing. I will be interested in hearing your thoughts on your use of the three networks.

MarketingProfs
The Three Most Popular Social Networks for Business (and Why You Should Use Them)

Google--"the U.S. Steel of Our Age"

I am currently reading "What Would Google Do?" by Jeff Jarvis. This book, so far, is an extremely well articulated view of many of the changes we are currently living and working through—both exciting and challenging times. The following is just a brief excerpt from the book.

“Do what you do best and link to the rest….

….In retail, media, education, government and health—everything—the link drives specialization, quality, and collaboration, and it changes old roles and creates new ones. The link changes the fundamental architecture of societies and industries the way steel girders and rails changed how cities and nations were built and how they operated. Google makes links work. Google is the U.S. Steel of our age.”

Print Is Dead! No It's Not! Yes It Is!

I am a self-professed centrist on many issues. Those who know me would not classify me as a wishy washy person and I have some kind of opinion on most everything. So, being a centrist does not mean having a lack of conviction, it simply means that on so many issues in life and in business, the answer lies somewhere between the extremes.

Americans are often big fans of extremes--we like there to be a clear winner and a clear loser, good and evil, black and white... Yes, some issues are clear, but many are more complex.

Is print dead? No. Is digital media the sole future of b2b marketing? No. Is digital media unimportant? No.

Print has been battered by this recession because effective print advertising often requires a bit more thinking and you have to be very strategic to "prove ROI" (some of my thoughts on "proving ROI" are contained in posts in August and September of 2008). A print ad does not deliver directly measurable instantaneous clicks. This does not mean print advertising does not have an important place in today's marketing mix.

By the same token, you can do things online that are simply impossible in print.

Like so many things, the answer to the question, "What does an effective marketing mix look like today?" is....it depends. In many cases mixing the old with the new in new ways is the path to greatest success. One of the many entertaining debates on this topic can be found within a recent Folio blog post.