The Groupon Effect: An Epidemic is Born

It all started with McDonald’s and the supersize trend. The objective? Take ordinary portion sizes and grossly enlarge them for an additional cost. Other fast food companies were close behind them. Similar to this is the recent Groupon epidemic, as lots of different companies vie for their 15 minutes of daily deal fame. Groupon pioneered, and is now synonymous with, the daily deal movement but there are many more jumping on the bandwagon. Newspapers like the New York Times and the San Diego Union Tribune are joining in, and some are making more money with deals than with interactive advertising http://bit.ly/m7qDY7. Magazines are considering it too, but conglomerates with lots of titles and national advertisers appear to have more success with it. Google has launched one it is currently beta testing, starting with Portland, OR of all places, called Google Offers http://bit.ly/dHoOMe. Perhaps the most similar to Groupon, Google Offers delivers deals via email. Packaged goods have even gotten in on the action, with General Mills being the first one to ever launch a deal http://bit.ly/jkMamb. Other websites are also following suit and find it generates more interest because the audience is already more interested in the product category and not just in the deals. Facebook is also launching a similar but more social approach with free ‘Facebook Deals,’ otherwise known as ‘check-in deals,’ to distinguish it from ‘Social Deals’ where Facebook Credits or money is needed to purchase the deal http://selnd.com/mN2h7J. What does this mean for Groupon and LivingSocial? How will this trend play out?

Well, if the supersize trend is any indication, market saturation is always a possible outcome. The flip side to this is that there will be a deals site for every kind of consumer known to mankind and it will become the norm with the expectation that every company has one. Another way this could play out is that Groupon and/or LivingSocial buys up all of or most of these deal sites and monopolizes the trend. No matter how it plays out, Groupon and LivingSocial will always have the edge because they have the revenue to expand globally and are doing so as others enter the game. Perhaps the biggest challenge to any deals site is overcoming the ‘one night stand,’ as when a user visits once to purchase a deal rather than becoming a repeat customer. If companies can figure out how to do that then they are on their way to building longevity for themselves in this endeavor. One way to do this is by starting a loyalty program that builds on daily deals outside of the online world http://bit.ly/jkMamb. Another way to do this, and probably how Google Offers will find success, is by signing customers up to receive updates on deals via email. As the saying goes: ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ By capitalizing on this and the persuasion principle of repetition, in this case placing a deals site and its deals in front of consumers’ faces over and over, a deals site stands to gain a loyal following. Should every company launch a daily deals site? Probably not. There are some industries where it is simply not applicable, such as the financial industry. It is all a matter of gauging whether it is a fit for your audience and then, if it is, working to make it pay off in great dividends for you and the brand you are promoting. You may not have a say in how the trend fares over time, but you do have a say in how it affects you and your brand. Use it wisely and it may have a great payoff. The choice, and the power, is in your hands.

Engagement Matters Most

The advent of online video, mobile and social media have prompted a slew of analytics and measurements. The most notorious of these is the ‘click.’ It used to be that more clicks on your ad or webpage indicated your message was well-received. However, this is no longer the case. Clicks became irrelevant with touchscreens, no mouse, and unreliable when they became ways to skip ads to get to more content. ‘Likes,’ ‘Google +1s’ etc. are also clicks, and are a one-time occurrence that cannot be repeated. It is what happens after and aside from these that matters most. Engagement is ongoing, which makes it the best form of measurement and the truest indication of a brand’s success. Mediaposts’ Diaz Nesamoney http://bit.ly/i5mlCj states that clicks are irrelevant in the presence of engagement, but groups ‘likes’ and ‘follows’ with ’tweets’ and ‘sharing.’ Facebook likes and following someone on Twitter are one-time occurrences, you cannot like the same content twice or re-follow someone to show ongoing support. Meanwhile, tweets and sharing signify and allow for multiple interactions. Likes and follows are a great form of measurement for initial and overall group appeal but fail to indicate ongoing engagement. Someone can like a particular piece of online brand content, but there is no guarantee that they will return to that brand in the future. Similarly, someone can follow someone on Twitter but that means nothing more than that their comments appear in that user’s feed. The best kind of engagement is commenting on content or sharing content, because it is the best indicator of a person’s experience and feelings and fosters long-term conversation and support. There is so much more that one can learn about someone from a comment or the types of content that they share. These are the types of things that help build audience profiles. However, they can go further. The question is, if engagement is the best form of measurement than how do we encourage more engagement? The answer is improving the opportunities for it to occur.

Bill Lederer mentions that online video is not quite ready for the $100 million challenge http://bit.ly/eqlnNz. This means that although the potential is there, it is not something that companies are willing to commit that much money to yet. The reason he names is that online video does not compare with the TV experience. As long as there is more content on TV than available online, aside from online user-generated content, there is not enough of an audience to generate huge ad placement. Online video also does not have any clearcut ROI developed yet as plays, etc. are not a good enough form of measurement. Thus, we need to offer a more comparable experience through making the variety and quality of online video content more comparable. This would make online video more of a destination and more people viewing is likely to lead to more comments and sharing. Discovering and establishing a clear set of ROI is what must take place so that there is more interest in media buys for online video. Social ads are also underwhelming and StumbleUpon’s Jack Krawcyzk claims this has to do with expectation and experience http://bit.ly/foLfwY. Targeted advertising on social networks is a great way to deliver your message to the right audience, but it does not lead to a huge amount of interaction. People go on social networks to interact with friends and they do not expect to find your ad there. Similarly with video or print content online, if a user is seeking out content and comes across an ad they are likely to skip or ignore it in favor of the content. Hence encouraging engagement also has to do with the presentation of your content and its placement. It is essential to consider all of these things when trying to encourage engagement and interaction with your company or brand. More interaction and engagement is what leads to a better brand-consumer relationship. A stronger brand-consumer relationship leads to a long-term increase in ROI. The foundation for all of this is engagement. Engagement is ongoing, and for your company and brand to be ongoing it is important to remember that engagement matters most.

Social Media Monitoring: Unlocking Potential

These days it is easy to get overwhelmed. Gone are the days where you could easily track your message’s whereabouts in placements generated by you. A message, brand and company are no longer sole property of the print world, the Internet changed all of that.  The Internet gave voice to that missing piece of the puzzle: the voice of the public. With the voice of the public engaging more heavily in conversation comes the monitoring of that conversation, among blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, etc., with social media monitoring. Social media monitoring consists of combining results from a variety of measurement tools and using them to measure campaign effectiveness and goal achievement, something that cannot be done with tools alone. One of the newer tools that may soon gain more traction is Twitter. Most people measure its effectiveness simply through retweets, but now Twitter is giving its users the ability to geographically target tweets and the analytics to measure the additional effects of a tweet http://bit.ly/hDGZqR. With geo-relevant tweets, McDonald’s Canada can now target tweets to its segment of the McDonald’s public about menu options that appeal to them, such as peach pie and chocolate-coffee milkshakes. Then with Twitter’s new Follower Dashboard they can measure more than just retweets. Follows, unfollows, click-through and other actions that result are now included so that a more complete picture of the response is generated. For example, RadioShack generated its #ineedanewphone hashtag last December. Using the Follower Dashboard they saw 65 million impressions, an above average engagement rate of 8.8% and wireless platform sales increase in double digits all within days of launching the promoted trend. All with the addition of these tracking features. 

While increases in monitoring options are crucial to seeing the whole big picture, they in no way limit your involvement. If anything they make it more important. Data means nothing without interpretation and judgement, and only a human being can analyze and interpret data and decide how to use it for the benefit of the brand and the company. Some people think that all you have to do is rely on the tools you use. That is the biggest mistake, when you take yourself out of the equation, because it is not that simple. Different tools are better at different things, it takes you to pull the best feedback from each and analyze it for your purposes. A social media monitoring tool cannot do that task and nothing can take the place of human analysis and interpretation. Both tools and human monitoring and analysis should always be used in tandem. Take for example the sentiment analysis that tools like UberVU have as part of their service http://bit.ly/9z981Y. A message is not simply neutral, negative or positive. Interpretations are subjective and tools do not have an effective reasoning component built into them. With social media monitoring, the most important thing is to plan what you are measuring, construct and distribute your message, evaluate and analyze the data and use it to inform your future decisions. Not giving enough thought to any one of these steps can be a critical misstep. Social media monitoring is an effective and essential tool, but only if it is used correctly. Tools were invented to help you manage the work, not do the work for you. You are an important part of social media monitoring, not just your tools. Never take yourself out of the equation. As long as you use social media monitoring tools to inform, and not control, you will be on the right track to getting your desired results.

Facebook 0, Google +1

Clearly it is not just about how many people ‘like’ you on Facebook anymore. Google is stepping up their game and revolutionizing search with their newest ‘social layer.’ “Meet +1: Google’s Answer to the Facebook Like Button” http://bit.ly/hzEzEl. Recently, Google stepped up its social search by allowing users to see when those in their social network (not including Facebook) create or share something that is relevant to their searches. Now Google takes it one step further by utilizing a user’s Gmail & Google Talk contacts, people in a ‘My Contacts’ group within a user’s Google Contacts, and people a user follows in Google Reader or Google Buzz to create a new social network. When a user searches for something, those within their network that +1 an ad, website, news story, etc. relating to that search will cause that content to show up earlier in that user’s search results. Although it seems similar to a Facebook ‘like,’ the option to +1 something is actually a more important factor. Simply, Google’s +1 stands to carry more weight than a Facebook ‘like.’ When people are searching for answers they turn to search engines first to enter in their query. What they see on Facebook that their friends like is not necessarily something they are searching for, more something that is interesting in passing. Something they notice and then check out versus something they are searching for that becomes the best answer because it has been recommended by their contacts. People act on word-of-mouth and it is no big secret that Google is capitalizing on this concept with Google +1. Thus, Google’s +1 stands to become the ultimate determination of the most popular content on the web.

What does this mean for the advertising and PR industry? A better tool for gauging how well your brand is doing. Users now see different rankings in their search depending on what their Google social network has recommended, which means it is now more important than ever to make sure your brand is reaching a wide audience. The farther its reach the more likely it will be ranked first, and the more likely it will experience its own +1 effect with the addition of more brand advocates. Search results show the names of the people in that person’s social network who create, share, or recommend content next to the content they create, share or recommend that is relevant to a user’s search. What better way to draw someone in than by finding a common link, a person or several persons you both have in common. Not only does it show content their contacts create, share or recommend towards the top, it also shows a collective number of +1 votes from all people for some links. After all, Google is also rolling out a +1 button for use on any website. Facebook and its ‘like’ button have built a monopoly, but all monopolies are eventually toppled. The ‘like’ button monopoly could end if Google +1 becomes popular, simply because the connection to search trumps unprompted content. Something that is more desirable carries more meaning, and if it carries more meaning then that will only be enhanced with recommendations from trusted contacts. Recommendations influence decisions, it is a simple concept put to use in a new context. Ad experts may be split on whether it will catch on, but there is no doubt that if it does it will change the game.