Digital Engagement: Internet Marketing That Captures Customers and Builds Intense Brand Loyalty

by Leland HARDEN, Bob HEYMAN

Overview

Leland Harden and Bob Heyman, online marketing pioneers and authors of the popular book Net Results, share their top tips to help marketers compete in this comprehensive digital marketing guide. In the current market, organizations face the very real challenge and necessity of engaging and appealing to their customers online. Digital Engagement teaches them how to do just that by introducing the best venues for online marketing and the latest and greatest digital marketing tools, including search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, social networking, virtual worlds, widgets, wikis, and emerging media. Marketers will learn how to: stop burning money on web advertising campaigns that don't deliver; tweak websites to improve conversions and traffic flow; master proven strategies for consumer-generated media; and generate buzz and improve brand recognition. Featuring case studies from companies like Toyota and Tommy Hilfiger as well as up-to-the-minute lists of key vendors for online marketing software, this is the only start-to-finish guide for navigating the newest and most effective online marketing tools.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814410721
Publisher:	AMACOM
Publication date:	01/14/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Leland Harden (Abilene, TX) and Bob Heyman (San Francisco, CA) are the co-founders of Cybernautics, a standard-setting new economy marketing agency that launched some of the biggest brands on the web. Harden is vice president of Institutional Advance-ment at Hardin-Simmons University. Heyman is chief search officer at Mediasmith, a leading media buying and planning agency.

Read an Excerpt

1. Goals and Expectations

INTERNET MARKETING is red-hot, once again. Television, radio, newspapers a magazines, major advertising agencies and major advertisers who once fought the tide are being forced now to redefine how they reach consumers and remain relevant. Web companies again are being bought for astronomical sums (Facebook handily rejected a $1 billion offer,

Yahoo! rebuffed a $44 billion takeover bid by Microsoft and the CBS

television network grabbed CNET’s roster of influential tech sites for

$1.8 billion, all during 2008). Some of the biggest names in web branding—

AOL for one—are roiling with change.

If your enterprise sat out the last Internet revolution, got burned or came late to the party that is Web 2.0, this book is for you.

Web 2.0 brought us social networking, wikis, virtual worlds where people shop for body parts, text message advertising, mobile video search, blog pundits who can make or break your reputation and your business. This book will show you how to employ these technologies profitably while keeping sight of your goals and using best practices to engage your consumers and your customers.

These are practices that have worked for us, and for companies such as Toyota Motor Sales USA, McDonald’s Corp., National Geographic,

Whirlpool Corp., Dr. Pepper, Unilever and others.

WHAT DOES “DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT” REALLY MEAN?

Managing digital engagement is all about managing the participatory power of millions of Internet users to profit your business. We don’t mean simply transferring portions of your ad dollars or marketing budgets to the web. Most of you are already doing that. Most of you may be quite adept at juggling marketing resources to take advantage of online opportunities to grow your business—and we can help you do this more successfully, and with more confidence and insight.

But engaging your customer within the online world requires a twist to the entire corporate mindset. It requires moving not just your media outreach but your entire organization’s mission into a participatory global economy that has no borders. Imagine:
• Letting your business customers design your next product—and fund the product’s advertising campaign.

• Becoming a household name—globally—through the power of viral online video, music and text.

This is your guidebook beyond the theoretical nuts and bolts, to tangible creative executive strategies you can use right now, with realworld examples.

ONLINE MEDIA ADVERTISING: YOU ARE SO THERE

American marketers spent $21.4 billion on Internet advertising in 2007 a according to eMarketer’s report, U.S. Advertising Spending, which also projects spending as high as $42 billion by 2011. According to this research group, the amount of online ad spending per Internet user will a in 2008, reach $100 per person if not more.

The trend for major advertisers is to pull money away from traditional media (TV, radio, magazines, newspapers) to spend more on-line. The top 100 American advertisers ranked by Advertising Age actually spent $230 million less on traditional media in 2006 compared to 2005, and increased Internet spending by $558 million in the same period.

Paid search (see Chapter 4) will account for about 40 percent of current online ad spending through 2011, while online display banner ads will account for about 20 percent. Classified ads, including those on newspaper websites, will continue to be explored as will social networking sites. Ad spending in social networks ran about $900 million in

2007, and about 8 percent of that went to niche sites targeted to older consumers, signaling a maturing of a market launched successfully to youthful demographics.

The numbers are important because major advertisers have signaled they anticipate a downturn in the U.S. economy, and in this report it was found that total media spending among these advertisers would increase only 2.1 percent. This means that all aggressive marketing in the next few years will be in the online space. If you are not there, you may be assured that your competitors will be.

In the key automotive advertising space particularly, a similar study by Advertising Age (Dec. 17, 2007) found that automakers planned for flat spending in 2008, and intended to scale back both TV and newspaper advertising, while “ramping up” online spending.

Let’s face it: Newspapers, magazines, and television went down in flames in 2007—all of these traditional media sectors suffered horribly.

Newspapers saw print readership decline, watched their online page views increase, and somehow still failed to connect the dots and realign their advertising revenue models. The magazine industry hemorrhaged and bled through drastic staffing cuts even as they took desperate measures to shore up declining subscriptions. Last year the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) found drastic losses in readership at Time (–17.57%)

and Playboy (–10.04%), while newsstand sales dropped for category leaders such as Glamour (–13.24%), National Enquirer (–15.25%) and Good

Housekeeping (–20.71%). Interestingly, the only national publication to show a solid increase was the reincarnation of Fast Company, a publication that caters to Web 2.0 entrepreneurs.

The 2007 television writer’s strike, which crippled American network television, had traditional advertising running for the exits and into the arms of online marketing partners. Most will not go back.

Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword ix

Acknowledgments xi

PART I: FUNDAMENTALS OF SUCCESS FOR

DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT 1

CHAPTER 1: Goals and Expectations 3

Case Study: Kidzter.com: Launching into Kid Space

CHAPTER 2: Making Over Your Website: Can You See

Me Now? 29

Case Study: Tommy Hilfiger USA: When a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Dollars

CHAPTER 3: Your Domain Name: How Online Branding Works 46

Special Section: Branding in China

PART II: ATTRACTING CUSTOMERS 65

CHAPTER 4: Search Engine Marketing: Optimize and Win 67

Special Section: Legal Issues of Paid Search

CHAPTER 5: Let’s Go Viral: Creating Buzz 94

Case Study—Sega: Kick-Starting Virality with the Sega Rally Revo™

17083-DigitalEngagement 10/15/08 9:07 AM Page vii

CHAPTER 6: Web Video: The New, New Thing 112

Special Section: Here’s the Pitch: Best Practices from Team TubeMogul

CHAPTER 7: Affiliate Marketing: The Automated

Referral Network 135

Special Section: Publisher Code of Conduct—Still a Good Idea

CHAPTER 8: Public Relations 2.0: Moving Beyond the

Traditional Media 148

Case Study: Toyota’s Branding in the Blog Space Aims for Conversations,

Not Conversions

CHAPTER 9: Paid Media: Advertising Works Harder on the Web 174

Case Study: Napster Returns

CHAPTER 10: Metrics and Measurement: Direct Marketing on Steroids 193

Special Section: Puzzling Out the Metrics of Engagement: An Interview with Dave Smith

CHAPTER 11: New Marketing Channels: Virtual Worlds,

Advergaming and Wireless Mobile Search 215

Where Do You Go from Here? 230

Digital Engagement Scorecard 231

A Web Marketing Glossary 233

Index 237

Editorial Reviews

"a solid launching point into the world of online marketing...For any business owner or marketing manager looking to catch up with the latest cultural trends, 'Digital Engagement' provides a one-stop shop for every new tool, trend or fad the Internet has to offer." --"Houston Business Journal"

"The nice thing about this book is that it provides enough information to get you started with a topic and links to online resources or tools to help you do it, but it doesn't overwhelm you with theory or numbers. Case studies included throughout show you how effective a strategy can be or how it can backfire." --"Online Magazine"

"a solid launching point into the world of online marketing...For any business owner or marketing manager looking to catch up with the latest cultural trends, 'Digital Engagement' provides a one-stop shop for every new tool, trend or fad the Internet has to offer." --"Houston Business Journal"

"The nice thing about this book is that it provides enough information to get you started with a topic and links to online resources or tools to help you do it, but it doesn't overwhelm you with theory or numbers. Case studies included throughout show you how effective a strategy can be or how it can backfire." --"Online Magazine"

From the Publisher