June 28, 2011 1 Comment
But first, some more data. We asked our respondents about the challenges they face in online marketing.
June 21, 2011 1 Comment
In my last post, I shared some of the results of our recent survey of our SMB customers. While I found the number of respondents using online marketing surprisingly low (63%), it informed us that SMBs (or our respondents in particular) aren’t very well-informed about online advertising and marketing, which is reflected in their low use of relatively easy and affordable channels such as online ads and blogging.
Therefore, I was less surprised at their assessment of the effectiveness of online tactics. While 56% found online advertising and marketing somewhat or very effective for their businesses, fully 44% found it ineffective. I believe this is less an indictment of online marketing and more an indication of the need to educate SMBs about these tactics.
June 10, 2011 5 Comments
In our recently concluded survey of our small business customers, we asked them about their use of online advertising and marketing tactics.
June 2, 2011 1 Comment
Twitter background designed by Affinity Express for a client
Interactive services is such a dynamic, interesting space. I recently interviewed Marisol Oberzauchner, director of interactive services at Affinity Express, to pick her brains about what she thinks of the space and what Affinity Express is doing in it. Here you go.
MO: Our clients are looking for informed guidance. In my role, I have to continually stay abreast of what is happening in the industry, so I connect to social media portals that cover these topics, track new technologies through communities on LinkedIn and access creative groups. Outside of work, I read technology books, computer magazines and daily digests. At times, I attend demonstrations of new products. The information is available; you just have to stay current and make it a daily priority.
Of course I follow the leaders in the space but also keep an eye out for the smaller firms who are trying to depart from the norm and solve problems in new ways. Breakthroughs seem to come frequently from these smaller guys and then the Apples and Googles buy them out. YouTube is a great example. I also found the acquisition of Radian6 by Salesforce.com interesting. A bigger recent event was of course Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype. Read more of this post
May 26, 2011 3 Comments
eMarketer recently reported results of a survey of online marketing tactics by SMBs with the headline: “For Small-Business Marketers, Are Fewer Channels Better?”
The gist of the article is that use of online tactics by SMBs has increased tremendously since 2010, but the effectiveness of these tactics has decreased. For example, 86% have a website in 2011 compared to 52% in 2010, but the reported effectiveness of the company website has gone down from 68% to 64%.
eMarketer explains this phenomenon thus:
A rush of small businesses to new marketing channels can mean that less experienced respondents are now reporting on the effectiveness of their efforts, which would naturally be lower than those who have been using a channel for many years. In addition, some small businesses could be overreaching by trying to tackle too many channels at once, without the necessary time and resources.
May 2, 2011 6 Comments
As an email marketer, I regularly seek out advice for creating better campaign emails. I know there is still a lot I could improve if I had the resources (time, for one!), but I try to do the best job I can. And some of the most basic and effective of all that advice is pretty easy to implement.
Which is why it surprises me when I get an email that flouts a “rule” that I’ve read about for some years. So here are some mistakes marketers are still making with email. Make sure you’re not one of them! Read more of this post
April 6, 2011 Leave a comment
After reading Todd Moshier rave about the presentation by John Paton at mediaXchange, I looked up the video. I have to agree with Todd: that talk was nothing short of inspirational. And while Mr Paton talks of and to newspapers, it struck me that his words are equally relevant for most businesses, including ours.
“There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.” (John Paton quoting Clay Shirky)
This isn’t true just of newspapers but of many businesses: print is declining. That doesn’t mean the skills or the objectives of print are redundant: you have to figure out what to work on and how to make it succeed. Quoting John Paton again:
April 4, 2011 2 Comments
February 23, 2011 3 Comments
The outsourcing of print ad production, interactive services and editorial services is increasingly common among North American newspapers. The benefits have been proven over time and many publishers have achieved significant savings they have channeled into new product and content development.
When asked about a cost-effective way to create and deliver content, Journal Register Company CEO John Paton answered: “It’s a two-part strategy. The first is outsourcing . . . why is outsourcing a $4 billion a year industry? Because outsourcers can do their jobs better than we do. . . . in fact, 66 percent of our cost structure is devoted to things we don’t want to do. Only one-third is content creation.”
If your newspaper is considering outsourcing any of these functions, here are ten tips specific to ad production (but which apply to a variety of services) that can make your transition smoother and allow you to see results more quickly. Read more of this post
February 17, 2011 Leave a comment
Agencies have completely lost their way. I don’t think time needs to be spent debating that point. What I haven’t seen yet is a cohesive plan to restore the true agency business model.
Let’s take a look at history. Ad agencies were started by newspaper executives, who realized that by “priming the pump” and delivering better ad creative, publishers would ultimately sell more ad inventory.
At their peak, agencies were hired for their ability to create big ideas—business-building ideas. I’m not saying you don’t need execution, process, traffic, operations and the rest. But I am saying I’ve never met a client who wants to give an agency a substantial account because of any of these things.
Agencies win on million dollar ideas (I do realize there are specialized agencies that focus on SEO, SEM, etc., but I’m talking about the truly big agencies here). You can’t pitch a Fortune 50 account and say “I have great process, I compensate my people correctly, my production is pristine” and so on. You have to go to them and say “I won client XYZ and they were floundering. With our help, they advanced from #6 in the category to #2, and are seriously competing to be #1″ (or something similar). Everything else you might say is a rabbit hole. You can spend all the time you want in it, but you won’t significantly advance your business.
How do you get to this point? Read more of this post
February 7, 2011 2 Comments
Google predicts the display ad market is set to go through an “amazing revolution” in the coming years, estimating the market will be worth $50 billion worldwide in 2015. In addition to the growth in volumes, there is a plethora of formats with 18 different “standard” display unit sizes in the AIB guidelines. That’s before you count the multitude of options for video and rich media. In a survey of major brands, 56% have rich media, video or interactive features in their ads.
At the same time, the use of simple static banners is not disappearing, contrary to all dire predictions. Just take a look at Facebook’s use of simple and small formats, which is helping to keep traditional display ads alive.
This tremendous growth in volume and variety of display ad formats begs the question: how is this creative production, and for that matter versioning and online ad maintenance, going to get done quickly and economically? And if it is being created by an internal team or an outside third-party agency, I have to ask at what cost to the advertiser?
February 4, 2011 4 Comments
We started this blog back in May somewhat tentatively, wondering what we would ever write about. Turns out we are much more voluble than we thought: this is the 100th post on the blog!
Thank you all who have been reading. If you are a regular reader, or if you just dropped in today, do comment and tell us why you come here. Or just say hi. We want to know you better.
And here are some of the posts I like best on this blog. Have you read them yet? Read more of this post
January 24, 2011 6 Comments
When I first heard about the Click Asia Summit, I immediately wanted to go. Not only was I likely to learn a lot from the scheduled sessions on SEO and social media marketing, but much of the discussion was also likely to be relevant to our business as a provider of interactive advertising and marketing production.
So I was really glad to be able to go, and have an experience that lived up to my expectations and more! Here are some of my highlights from the event: some sessions I loved, some things I learned, some people I met. Read more of this post
January 10, 2011 1 Comment
Kelly keeps sending me these print publications to read, and I love that. Even though I read most of them online, I’m still enough of a technophobe to like going through the print versions and always find that I’ve missed some of the articles. So I’m often a month or two behind on the magazine editions.
One of the magazines I regularly read is BtoB: I learn so much about marketing from reading that. But last week, as I leafed through a two-month-old issue, I read something that surprised me (and not in a cake-and-balloons way).
The writer claims that a friend who is a car dealer is having a difficult time, and then goes on to say that consumer electronics is a “horrible business”. Now that phrase caught my eye, so I went back and read from the beginning to see if I’d understood wrong. But no, the reason why these businesses are so bad now? It’s that customers have information.
But as a consumer, the easy access to information we have right now is an amazing boon. As Gillin points out, if I want to buy a new laptop, I won’t go to a shop to decide what to buy: I will compare not just specs but also reviews and prices right from home. I’ll find out what shop to buy from, and if I can get it cheaper in another city (or really, another country: the laptop I’m working on right now came from the US when my husband was over there on a business trip and he ordered it online and brought it over). Read more of this post
December 30, 2010 1 Comment
Click to view our online card.
From all of us here at Affinity Express, we wish you and your loved ones a wonderful year ahead.
December 28, 2010 3 Comments
We asked our designers to submit their best work this year and awarded the winning entries. Let me tell you, the judges did not have an easy job!
December 13, 2010 2 Comments
eMarketer says display ads are growing faster than search ads. While search ads are often extolled by marketers because they are targeted specifically to users who are searching for information about those product/service, the rapid growth in display ads makes sense to me. Here’s why:
Search ads offer you so little space for your message, no way to design your ad to stand out from others (and remember I wrote about how important design is for advertising). You can use rich media or videos. eMarketer’s article mentions that video ads are predicted to grow at least 34% every year through 2014, driving the growth in display ads. Read more of this post
December 5, 2010 7 Comments
Having established our own Facebook page earlier this year, Affinity Express is well aware of the site’s incredible popularity. In fact, Facebook is the most visited site in the U.S., with more than 500 million users worldwide.
One of our key market segments is newspapers and multi-media publishers. We’ve been providing print and online ad production for several years and, more recently, launched social media services. The implication for our clients and prospects is that Facebook might already have more reach in the community than any other media outlet, including local newspapers. But rather than competing, Facebook can be used by newspapers as a very viable (and affordable) short-term solution to boost traffic and page views for their websites and generate new revenue from advertisers). Read more of this post
December 1, 2010 Leave a comment
As we enter the last month of 2010, I have been thinking about what we have achieved this year and how we can do better next year. 2010 was particularly good for Affinity Express. I’d like to share with you some of what we have accomplished.
