Category Archives: CoupSmart

Inspire word of mouth recommendations from your loyal fans

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Woman using coupon 1.22.1392% of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth or recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising—an increase of 18 percent since 2007, according to a study from Nielsen, a leading global provider of information and insights into what consumers watch and buy. *

Many marketers have put considerable effort into enticing fans to join their communities on Facebook, google+, Twitter and Pinterest. And why do fans accept the invitation? They are extending their approval and loyalty, but they are also expecting exclusive offers, invitations or opportunities to participate in promotions. What have you done lately to retain those fans, show appreciation and inspire word of mouth recommendations from your fans and followers?

CoupSmart, (full disclosure: Raise Your Share provides sales & marketing for the company) is all about the science of social couponing. According to CoupSmart, 58% of consumers cite coupons as the top reason to follow a brand on Twitter and Facebook. That means your posts, your pics, and your poems– they’re all fine and dandy, but (per usual) it’s money that really talks. Realize that there’s been a one-third increase in coupon usage since 2007. That’s huge.

So what’s the big deal? Why social coupons?

More consumers now than ever are pre-shopping. That is, they’re making decisions before they even leave the comfort of their home or office. In today’s faced-paced world, people know what they want, where to go, and how much they’re going to spend before they shop, and that’s all heavily dependent on where the deals are. According to CoupSmart’s research, the percentage of consumers searching online for coupons before making a decision on what to buy and where to shop doubled in 2011 to– wait for it– 64%.

CoupSmart offers a simple and straightforward concept

(1) Offer an exclusive deal, (2) make it worthwhile for the consumer and (3) make it available only for a limited time. It sounds simple, and it is. CoupSmart’s tech makes it so. Like all things social, the key is to let your strategy work for you. Services like CoupSmart are delivered to your fans on Facebook. Automated analytics work with you to track who responds, how often, and which offers they redeem, providing a sense of accountability for where, exactly, marketing dollars are going. The key is turning the passive observer into an active user – a fan into a customer. Offering an exclusive offer to your fans, which, in turn, allows them to make a word of mouth recommendation by sharing the offer, satisfies your fan’s expectations and gives them a way of including their friends too! Everybody wins.

Contact Raise Your Share for more information about what CoupSmart can do for you. Want to learn more about couponing with social media? Follow CoupSmart’s blog now.

* Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising and Brand Messages report, 2011

Creating Positive Social Media ROI panel at the Digital Non Conference Cincinnati

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In the breakout session on Wednesday, September 14, from 3-4pm, panelists take on the age-old question: how do I know my investment in time and money is actually working? For marketers championing a social media program, three words hold a tremendous amount of weight: Return On Investment. How does your company launch targeted, effective campaigns and measure them effectively to gauge success? This panel will help you plan for the ultimate goal – impressive return on investment – at every stage of your social media outreach. Creating Positive Social Media ROI presenters include Jackie Reau, co-founder of Game Day Communications; Alex Shebar, yelp Community Manager Cincinnati; Patrice Watson, CEO, Raise Your Share plus moderator, Chuck Tobar, Senior Business Development Manager, Shoutlet.
Learn more about the Digital Non Conference in Cincinnati on 9/13-/914 with this short video.

Purchase tickets for the Digital Non Conference: http://digitalcincinnati.org/

Publishers build new revenue with digital assets

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Mathew Ingram cites how several national publishing groups are moving to leverage their digital assets and brand in creative ways to produce new revenue. I use the term ‘monitize’ continually while exploring new ways for my clients to use social media real estate to engage readers, support your sponsor’s efforts and drive e-commerce through app technology. His closing comment sums the state of affairs succinctly:

No one has found the formula for generating revenue from online publishing, so the more experimentation that occurs the better.


New media mantra: Monetize, monetize, monetize
By Mathew Ingram Jun. 14, 2011, 3:04pm

It’s great that your magazine or newspaper website has millions of page views or unique visitors a month, but those kinds of statistics mean less and less when traditional banner ads bring in virtual pennies for the media companies running them. Some see iPad apps and paywalls as the solution, but several major media outlets such as Hearst and AOL have started experimenting with other ways of monetizing their content — and even Google says it wants to help by making traditional online advertising more efficient for publishers.

Google’s contribution comes in the form of an acquisition. The search giant confirmed on Monday that it’s buying AdMeld, which provides tools that allow online publishers to make their ad buying and placement more efficient. According to several reports, Google is paying $400 million for the company, which makes it one of Google’s largest acquisitions. The web giant says it’s buying AdMeld because “we often hear from major website publishers that ad management today is still mind-numbingly complicated and inefficient.”

Meanwhile, both AOL’s Patch and Hearst are experimenting with different forms of advertising that they hope will convert browsers and readers into shoppers: AOL, for example, has partnered with a service that American Express runs called Serve to launch a Groupon-style “daily deals” offering. As part of the deal, customers can get a co-branded AmEx card that lets them redeem offers at the point of sale without having to print out coupons (something Groupon users apparently complain about).

The AOL unit has more than 800 Patch sites across the U.S., a hyper-local project it has spent more than $100 million on since it launched last year. But while traffic to Patch sites has been climbing — according to some recent estimates — the revenue being generated by the operation is still minuscule. Will local readers be attracted by daily deals from merchants in their area? That’s the bet AOL is making, and some traditional publishers such as the Toronto Star (which acquired a Groupon clone called WagJag last year) say they have been using a similar strategy with some success.

Hearst Magazines, meanwhile, has formed a partnership with a company called Pixazza that allows readers to click on images, find out more about products in the image, then click through and buy them if they wish. This kind of interactive ad has been the dream of advertisers since the commercial web was first invented, but it has never really paid off in the way most had hoped. Hearst is also partnering with Buddy Media to develop Facebook-based apps that allow more interactivity with the magazines’ content.

Whether any of these monetization attempts will ultimately be successful is anyone’s guess. Patch is a gigantic bet by AOL that locally relevant content will draw enough readers to make an advertising-based revenue model work, and the Serve deal is just another twist on that — if not enough readers come to Patch sites, it won’t really matter what kind of advertising the site has. Likewise, Hearst could be trying to squeeze revenue out of a smaller and smaller group of traditional magazine readers.

That said, however, at least there is some experimentation going on, rather than just the same old creatively bankrupt banner advertising campaigns that media sites have been relying on forever. No one has found the formula for generating revenue from online publishing, so the more experimentation that occurs the better.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Emilian Robert Vicol
This story is sourced from:

http://gigaom.com/2011/06/14/new-media-mantra-monetize-monetize-monetize/

Follow Matthew on Twitter @mathewi

The price of a Facebook fan – post reprinted from Ellie Behling’s Blog, Vital Business Media

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How much do you have to pay to get people to “like” you?

A new report from digital marketing firm Webtrends examined Facebook ad campaigns and the “cost per fan,” or the ad spend required to acquire fans, among different industries.

The good news for media companies is that they typically spend less acquiring Facebook fans than companies in most other industry sectors. That shouldn’t be a big surprise, considering media and entertainment-based companies have built-in fan bases, unlike a sector like healthcare that is just beginning to interact directly with customers.

The study also found that media and entertainment companies advertising on Facebook get better click-throughs than other industries.

The report analyzed 4.5 billion Facebook ad impressions across 1,529 campaigns. Across all industries, the study revealed that Facebook ads perform half as well as traditional banner ads. It also found some differences in how geographic and demographic groups interact with Facebook ads (“the older we get, the more we click”).

The price of a Facebook fan
Advertising campaigns from media channels stood out from other industries, receiving a 0.165 percent click-through rate, compared to 0.050 percent across all industries, according to Dennis Yu, managing principal of Facebook marketing at Webtrends. Media properties also acquire Facebook fans at a cheaper price than other industries (between 31 and 41 cents compared to $1.02 across all industries).

The chart below illustrates how media companies have higher click-through rates and lower cost per clicks than companies in other industries. While Facebook is usually more of a focus for consumer media, B2B media companies might be interested in how particular industries fared.

(Use quick link to the right: Industry Comparison Table – Facebook click through rates and costs per clicks)

The value of Facebook fans
The study by Webtrends, which offers a Facebook advertising platform, mostly looked at media companies that are more entertainment-focused, rather than traditional, print-based publishers, which aren’t advertising much on Facebook. Yu said more traditional publishers could be taking advantage of Facebook advertising in order to acquire fans, for instance by targeting friends of fans.

“The traditional, brick-and-mortar folks aren’t there yet; it’s a new opportunity,” he said in a phone interview.

But why is acquiring fans valuable for publishers? Yu compared the ROI of Facebook fans to the ROI of having an e-mail list; it’s another method to drive revenue to subscription products.

Yu added that Facebook is now the foundation of where people are interacting; the next step is doing something in the platform. “Now the game is ‘who can build applications and other things on top of this infrastructure?’,” he said.

Media companies have a built-in advantage because they have the ability to engage Facebook fans with content.

“Naturally, social media is a great medium for news ― it’s shareable, has emotional context, is current, and can be made very relevant to highly targeted audiences,” Yu said in an e-mail.