SEO Werkt!

The psychology behind how we spend our money is a wondrous thing. I’ll gladly throw down $1 a day for a Diet Coke, but I’m reluctant to spend $1.50 on a box of pasta that would feed my whole family when I can get it for less than that on another day. I’m also reluctant to pay for additional levels on my iPad games. I’ve done it once or twice, but it’s not an easy button push.

For whatever reason, mobile users will do almost anything to keep from paying for an upgrade – including engage with ads.

The data comes from a new study by the Yankee Group called “Redefining Virtual Currency.” It’s an informative read and it’s free, so you should check out the whole report if you’re in the app biz. Disclaimer time: the survey was paid for by Tapjoy, a company that is in the mobile advertising biz. Not saying the data is biased, I just want to be clear.

The report says that 1 in 3 mobile owners are downloading 2 to 3 apps per month. 1 in 5 are downloading 4 to 6 apps a month. Almost all smartphone owners and more than 85% of tablet owners have at least one free app on their device.

When it comes to paid apps, the numbers drop. 63% of smartphone owners and 64% of tablet owners have paid for an app. Smaller, but still, very good numbers.

It gets better. 54% of smartphone owners and 41% of tablet owners have paid for an upgrade to an app.

So, we know they’ll pay – but the flipside is, they’d rather not. Free is better, of course. Even if it means watching an ad in order to get a reward.

What kind of reward is worth the effort? This is my favorite chart from the study:

71% would watch an ad in return for a free coffee! LOL. Make that a Diet Coke and I’m in. I also find it fascinating that “paperback book” was the second most popular choice. Who says people don’t read? At the top of the list is the tablet app, coming in 7% higher and a smartphone app. Why? It’s not that tablets are more popular, it’s probably because tablet apps cost more. I haven’t seen a study but that’s been my experience.

Mobile users are already warming up to the idea of exchanging time and information for digital goods. 53% of tablet owners in the survey said they already viewed commercials in exchange for a free app download. I don’t think I have but I probably would if the opportunity presented itself.

Which brings me to the point – this is an opportunity for marketers that hasn’t been fully explored. Pretend you like to hike. You get a free hiker’s guide app but to get more hiking trails in your area you must pay an additional .99. Or you can submit your email address to a company that sells hiking gear and get the upgrade for free.  It’s a three-way win. The customer gets a personalized upgrade. The retailer gets a targeted email to add to his mailing list. The app developer gets a kick-back for every email he collects.

According to the study, The virtual currency market is currently sitting at $47.5 billion in the US. By 2017, it’s expected to rise to $55.4 billion. Who doesn’t want a piece of that?

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There’s something about summer music festivals that seems to inspire a fresh wave of innovation each year, and 2012 is no exception. Rather than offering tailored services such as RFID-enhanced security or helping to find shared transportation, however, UK fashion brand Very has launched what it describes as the world’s first festival delivery service designed to keep attendees at Virgin Media’s V Festival well-clothed.

Shop Direct Group’s Very is the official fashion partner for the V Festival, and to better serve revelers at the event, the online department store is bringing its free Collect+ delivery service to the fields of the festival’s Chelmsford site. During the festival’s two-day span of August 18 and 19, festival-goers will be able to buy any of the brand’s 50,000 fashion or home items online directly from their phones on the Friday of the festival, with free next-day delivery to V Festival on Saturday. Not only that, but a special, 50-piece “Festival Favourites” collection, including staples from tents to wellies, will be available for delivery to the official Very.co.uk tent in just one hour. Teams of Very representatives will be on hand at the festival taking orders as well. Also available in the brand’s official tent, meanwhile, will be “Glam Pods” equipped with hair straighteners, mirrors and other beauty necessities.

There’s no doubt festival-goers constitute a distinct market niche with unique needs of their own; that, of course, translates into a unique opportunity for marketers. How could your brand serve revelers with a specially tailored product or service?

Website: www.very.co.uk
Contact: queries@very.co.uk

Selling ads online isn’t easy and unless you have a site with a large audience, chances are the major advertising networks aren’t interested in working with you. Direct ad sales are often an attractive option for smaller blogs and online publications, but managing them can be a major hassle. Skyscrpr, a new startup launching out of Vancouver’s GrowLab accelerator today, wants to make direct ad sales easy for publishers. As the company’s co-founder Paul Burger told me yesterday, SkyScrpr wants to take the hassle out of direct ad sales and let publishers focus on creating content. The service offers a very well designed and easy to use drag-and-drop interface to set up ad units on your site.

SkyScrpr is targeting everything from smaller personal sites with 50,000 pageviews per month to mid-tier sites with 5 million pageviews. The service handles the complete workflow from getting the ads set up to handling payments after the deal is done. There are, of course, other direct ad sales solutions available for bloggers and small online publishers, including iSocket and BuySellAds. For the most part, their features are comparable, but SkyScrpr doesn’t currently focus as much on marketing its publishers’ inventory as much as BuySellAds does, for example.

In return, SkyScrpr offers a beautiful interface that makes managing and tracking ad campaigns easier than any other tool out there and, as Burger told me, he and his co-founder Jacob Reiff are working on adding more marketing solutions for publishers. Unlike other solutions, SkyScrpr also doesn’t have any minimum pageview requirements for sites that want to implement it.

As Burger told me earlier this week, the service is currently available for free and the team is still working out the details of how to best monetize the service. Chances are, SkyScrpr will take a cut from all ad sales generated through its site, but the team seems open to experimenting with other solutions as well.

The team is currently in the process of raising a funding round, but because the negotiations are still ongoing, Burger wasn’t able to reveal any details just yet.

It’s wonderful that landing pages have become so widely known, at least in search marketing and conversion optimization circles. They’re a well-honed tactic that everyone in our space understands. Want to improve your conversion rate on search campaigns? Direct your clickthroughs to…



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

While the technology to sell content directly to consumers has existed for a while, few seemed to take advantage of it. Then something changed: First there was Louis C.K., selling his one-hour special Live At The Beacon Theatre to fans for just $5, DRM-free and all. Then Aziz Ansari followed suit. So did Jim Gaffigan. In fact, if you’re a big-time comic and not selling comedy specials direct to your fans, you’re probably doing something wrong.

And it’s not just comics — there’s also a growing community of indie filmmakers who are selling movies on their own, forgoing traditional distribution channels. And what about musicians who want to distribute recordings of their performances, or educators whose lectures could be valuable outside the university system? If you’re not a well-known star, there haven’t been a lot of good ways to make your content available to consumers.

Anyway, that’s what Pivotshare is for. The startup provides a self-serve platform that will let anyone — absolutely anyone — upload their audio or video files to the Internet and sell them directly to fans. And to do so, it’s raised one million dollars in Series A financing from new media investor TownsgateMedia.

Up until now, most content creators putting video online tried to recoup the costs through advertising, but that’s not always the best solution. In part, that’s because getting set up was too complicated. But with Pivotshare, creators don’t have to worry about the vagaries of picking an online video platform, paying for a CDN, setting up a payment system, etc. All they have to do is upload a video, set their price, and Pivotshare takes care of the rest.

Even better, there are no upfront costs or recurring monthly fees associated with publishing those videos through Pivotshare. The startup collects a portion of sales, which means that creators only pay Pivotshare when they are actually making revenue through its platform.

Pivotshare isn’t alone in trying to help content creators monetize their content. VHX, which was behind Aziz Ansari’s special, as well as the online distribution of Indie Game: The Movie, recently raised $1.25 million. The difference is that Pivotshare is hoping to go beyond big-name content producers to enable speakers, conference organizers, and other associations to better monetize their video assets. There will likely be even more companies popping up to cash in on this new opportunity as direct-to-consumer media sales continue to take off.

The Talkable Brand video series continues…

Episode #31 | Talkable is Oral

In this episode, you will learn the oral conversation about brands dominates the digital conversation.

NOTE: The Talkable is Oral script was first published on March 3, 2012.

BACKGROUND INFO:
The Talkable Brand video series will help you to strategically think about ways to make your brand, your business worthy of word of mouth. Every Tuesday on the Brand Autopsy blog a new episode will premiere giving you knowledge and a nudge. Knowledge being interesting information. The nudge being compelling motivation to make the information happen. The result, I hope, is helping you make brands more talkable.

EPISODE ARCHIVE:
Jan. 10 | Achievable
Jan. 17 | Believable
Jan. 24 | Bankable
Jan. 31 | Original
Feb. 07 | Practical
Feb. 14 | Paradoxical
Feb. 21 | Artful
Feb. 28 | Skillful
Mar. 06 | Informational
Mar. 13 | Comical
Mar. 20 | Loveable
Mar. 27 | Functional
Apr. 03 | Social
Apr. 10 | Emotional
Apr. 17 | Conversational
Apr. 24 | Relatable
May 01 | Invisible
May 08 | Visual
May 15 | Conversable
May 22 | Conditional
May 29 | Measurable
Jun. 05 | Scalable
Jun. 12 | Cultural
Jun. 19 | Controversial
Jun. 26 | Recommendable
July 03 | Natural
July 10 | Remarkable
July 17 | Vulnerable
July 24 | Operational
July 31 | Maintainable

If you’re in the Bay Area, and you have a few free hours over lunch on August 22, why not join me for a discussion about Judy, Jennifer, and Jasmine … your three favorite ladies??!!


The Direct Marketing Association of Northern California is putting on a nice luncheon on August 22, don’t you think? (Click Here for Details).  You’ll learn plenty from Kathi Kaplan (VP at VMWare) and Kim Hansen (VP at TravelSmith), making your nominal investment pay off.


See you on August 22 in San Francisco …

Usually, when someone sneaks up to a rich guy's house and drives off with a Porsche, it's a reason to call the police. This time, it might be a reason to call an auto dealership. In a clever spin on direct mail for Toronto's Pfaff Automotive, Canadian agency Lowe Roche photographed one of the dealership's Porsches in the driveways of affluent homes, then used each image to create an ad left at the home where it was shot. The headline: "It's closer than you think." The result, according to the agency's case study video below, was a 32 percent response rate to a site where recipients could schedule a test drive. Direct mail is typically about hitting as many people as possible for as low a cost as possible, but this creative idea shows that for luxury brands, a smaller effort can sometimes go a long way. Credits after the jump.

CREDITS
Client: Pfaff Porsche
Agency: Lowe Roche, Toronto
Creative Directors: Dave Douglass, Pete Breton
Art Director: JP Gravina
Copywriter: Simon Craig
Print Producer: Beth Mackinnon
Account Team: Dave Carey
Video Production: Motion Pantry
Director / Cameraman / Editor: Dean Vargas

The Talkable Brand video series continues…

Episode #29 | Talkable is Operational

In this episode, you will learn truly talkable are operations-driven and not marketing-driven businesses.

BACKGROUND INFO:
The Talkable Brand video series will help you to strategically think about ways to make your brand, your business worthy of word of mouth. Every Tuesday on the Brand Autopsy blog a new episode will premiere giving you knowledge and a nudge. Knowledge being interesting information. The nudge being compelling motivation to make the information happen. The result, I hope, is helping you make brands more talkable.

EPISODE ARCHIVE:
Jan. 10 | Achievable
Jan. 17 | Believable
Jan. 24 | Bankable
Jan. 31 | Original
Feb. 07 | Practical
Feb. 14 | Paradoxical
Feb. 21 | Artful
Feb. 28 | Skillful
Mar. 06 | Informational
Mar. 13 | Comical
Mar. 20 | Loveable
Mar. 27 | Functional
Apr. 03 | Social
Apr. 10 | Emotional
Apr. 17 | Conversational
Apr. 24 | Relatable
May 01 | Invisible
May 08 | Visual
May 15 | Conversable
May 22 | Conditional
May 29 | Measurable
Jun. 05 | Scalable
Jun. 12 | Cultural
Jun. 19 | Controversial
Jun. 26 | Recommendable
July 03 | Natural
July 10 | Remarkable
July 17 | Vulnerable

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