Archive for April, 2010
Facebook is diving into the Geotargeting world. Google already has multiple tools tied to this technology. Foursquare and Gowalla are the current internet hotties, mostly because the strength of their location-based API’s are so intriguing. But what does this mean and why should you care? Well, for one thing, it takes the vastness of the internet and localizes it for business and personal use.
Case in point. You’re driving around an area looking for an interesting restaurant. You’d love to have a library of options at your fingertips but too many choices, especially irrelevant ones, are just as useless as none at all. So you push one simple button on your mobile phone and maybe add in the price range you’re looking for. And, oh, you’re in the mood for Thai food. As Emeril would say, BAM! You have the top options right there on your mobile phone, along with reviews. But that’s only the beginning. You also see who you know that’s eating there right now, how long the wait is, and what the specials are for that evening. And because your phone knows where you ate last night, last week, last month, it gives you a comparison in terms of how much you spent, and how many people who ate at the other places you ate at also ate at the restaurant options currently showing on your mobile phone.
This is a basic Geotargeting service that’s been around for a few years now. In the tech world it’s no longer a big deal. But the most important part of this technology is just now being realized, as people become more and more overwhelmed with the vast amount of information available to them (usually for free) online. When it comes to needing/doing things locally, this takes the online world and narrows it down to something as small as a neighborhood block.
Stop for a moment and think about how that can help your business. This technology not only allows them to find you, but you to find them. Hmmm…. Opportunity? We think so.
We get asked all the time how bad and/or false reviews and comments can be taken off Google’s search page results. Sad to say, most of the time they can’t.
Bummer, huh? Especially because ticked off customers tend to respond more than happy customers. And bad competitors are apt to be aggressively negative. This is why the most important thing you can do is to be diligent in your listening.
If you find an illegitimate posting soon after it was submitted, and you are fairly certain it has been put there by a competitor, you can submit a complaint to the sponsor of its source (i.e. Yelp, Insider Pages) as well as the search engine (i.e. Google, Bing, Yahoo!). But you need to do it quickly. And you need to have legitimate backup to prove it.
If you find a negative, but legitimate, posting, 90% of the time it pays to respond to it publicly – no matter how painful that may be. If you also have a way to reach them offline without invading their privacy, it is obviously helpful. But, even more than the unhappy complainer, think what your response will do for a potential customer who reads it. You have the opportunity to show them you care, you are timely, and you’ve made an effort to right what might be a wrong. Only when it appears that you are dealing with an irrational person who would just use your response to continue degrading you or your company should you keep quiet.
Finally, the best thing you can do to get these comments out of readers eyesight is to “push them down”. That means create more relevant and current information that will show up higher in search results and move this older information down and off the first search page results.
If you have questions or want to talk more about this, feel free to contact us.
I found this fascinating blog quote regarding agency compensation:
Media costs are market determined, so they’re easy to value. An hour of time is easily measured by a clock. But, how is the brightness of an idea measured, or the effectiveness of communication? These are really fuzzy, non-touchable things to measure. In the land of lawyers they’re called “intellectual property,” and payments for them are generally determined through royalties and licenses.kilgannonsays.wordpress.com, Kilgannon Says, Mar 2010
Just yesterday I was with a great client of ours debating how our agency fees should be valued. He noted that when we first started working with him two years ago our compensation was based on a much heavier level of traditional media use. He very politely argued that now, since we have moved away from so much traditional media, the fee doesn’t make sense. I responded saying how ironic it was that, since we moved away from the traditional media, we were actually investing more time and effort into his account. Neither of our thoughts were valid points. His tied our value to traditional media commissions. Mine tied our value to the clock. As an ancient wise man once said, what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
I love the story about the plumber who shows up at a home for an emergency repair. He spends five minutes fixing a very large pipe leak in the kitchen. After his five minutes of work he hands the homeowner a bill for $150. The homeowner is exasperated and accuses the plumber of highway robbery, stating that the repair only took him five minutes and how dare he charge that much for such a quick repair. The plumber calmly replies, “I just saved your kitchen flooring, which appears to be worth thousands, not to mention your water bill, which would have been very high had I not known what to do quickly. Are you paying me for the five minutes, or for my ability to solve your problem?”
As agencies we spend most of our working hours helping clients solve their problems. This usually means helping them generate more customers, more leads, and more sales. But even with today’s amazing online technology and the ability to measure consumer movement and actions, there is still a lot of intangible effectiveness that can result from an agency’s problem-solving efforts. Like the ability to pick the right musical background for a radio spot that increases it’s stickiness. Or being able to negotiate lower printing costs for a mailer that, in turn, increases the project’s ROI. Or how about not only coming up with the big idea, but then making sure it’s delivered through every brand touch point from website to floor graphics, to business cards, to POP to traditional media?
An agency’s value should be based on their ability to quickly and accurately determine the problem, develop a strategic solution, and deliver appropriate results. That’s what the plumber had. That’s what the customer was paying for. And that makes sense. So, maybe we should change our name to Brandtailers Plumbing?
