Using relevant targeted TV ads

It's Friday and I'm watching crap TV, that's why the ads seem a little more interesting. Lately they haven't been.

I spotted an ad just now that will never win any awards, the direction is functional, the script direct. It has no superstars in it and no whispering back and white film noir camera work. But this is a great TV ad, why is is great. Well because it speaks directly to the audience its targeted at. The ad is for Match.com the biggest dating website.

Don't click away

The ad for was so great because it was timely and relevant. The script is along the lines of "Last month we said we didn't have enough men on Match.com. Well we now have loads more new men". It then signed off with it's 6 month guarantee.

There was no need to fill in the blanks of "So ladies that means there are loads of new men to date" because the ad had achieved that easily and the interested single ladies knew exactly what to do.

The best bit for Match.com is that they will be able to measure success. The equation is simple Cost of Ad/Number of new signups and returning users equals ROI. Simples! (as another measurable clever ad keeps saying)

Just what is twitter anyway?

Twitter is the buzz word of the moment, its the big new thing that's going to change all the rules or so they say. Don't get me wrong I love Twitter and everything it stands for, no ads (yet) and freedom to post what you like (for the time being).

But there seems a fashion for just dropping Twitter into a conversation because its a new word. Although in Sheffield, my home city, its been used for years to describe 'to witter', which to be honest is a pretty good description of what most people do on it!

The question most asked is 'Just what is Twitter anyway' followed shortly by 'I just don't get it'.

My take on it is this: Twitter is no new thing, it's just a new website which is a really easy way to communicate with people and spread ideas. People are very used to texting, which means for most people that you keep your messages short and to the point, Twitter forces you to do that by restricting your message to 140 characters, including spaces.

So you use Twitter like any other communication tool, make sure your messages make sense, are polite and to the point.

As to who you follow, well that up to you. If you just want to follow your friends great, if you want to follow Stephen Fry (everybody does) that's fine too. Who follows you well that's up to you as well. Like any online community there are plenty of spammers and plenty of people just wanting to collect followers but ultimately if you don't want them to follow you then you can block them of if your such a private person then you can allow only certain people to follow you.

Really Twitter is no big deal, its definitely nothing to be scared of, in fact I think its a lot of fun and has loads of really great uses. Best way to to find out 'just what Twitter is' is to sign up and see for yourself.

Gmail ads

The ads on my Gmail account can be very very funny.

Just got this one no idea how it connected to my email content but never mind.

Professional Mole Catcher - www.EssexMoles.co.uk - Mole Control, Domestic & Commercial No Mole - No Fee.

To the point and utterly brilliant if I lived in Essex and I had a mole problem I'd be straight on to this guy!

The Mad Men are getting clever on Twitter

Yesterday I Twitted a story from the BBC about how the series Mad Men is influencing fashion.

Very quickly after posting this I got two new followers Peggy Olson and Betty Draper both characters from the show.

Betty Draper has a blog Welcome to the Drapers which showcases life for an American housewife in the early 60's complete with recipes and hits for around the house. All perfectly put together to show the underlying stresses Betty is under in the series.

Peggy Olson has a LinkedIn site which states her experience as:

Peggy Olson’s Experience
Copywriter
Sterling Cooper
(Marketing and
Advertising industry)
1961 — Present (48 years)
I've worked on print and broadcast campaigns for clients such as Belle Jolie, Clearasil, Samsonite, Right Guard, Mohawk Airlines, Martinson's Coffee, and Playtex. I'm eager to learn and do all I can to improve my skills. I hope to be a creative director some day, but I know I have a lot to learn first.

This is such as perfect way to promote a series all about Ad men in the 60's by using modern methods.

Only question is what would the ad men of Sterling Cooper do with a smoking a drinking ban in the work place?

Compare the Meerkat

The guys at Compare the Market are very brave and clever. If you've ever been on their site to look for financial services or the whole host of things they offer, you'll know that they are very good at giving you a great service that saves you cash and time.

But I guess for them and you probably its pretty dull stuff, I mean just how excited can you get about it, not very is my guess.

Which is shy their Compare the Meerkat campaign is go good. My first glimpse of the campaign was the spoof email I got from Aleksandr the annoyed Meerkat running his site comparethemeerkat.com which is losing visitors to comparethemarket.com. The great thing is that its done with total conviction, no giveaway that its really from compare the market. The team there have given their customers the benefit of having a sense of humour and not had to explain the joke to them. When you click through the email you get a fully functioning website, which delivers a way to actually compare Meerkats, to tricks or gimmicks shoved in the way.

Here's the TV ad too, which completes the whole set.

On top of that there's even a FaceBook group for compare the Meerkat which already had 17,000 members. All this results in a fantastically executed campaign which has great viral qualities and makes what could have been a very conservative campaign work very, very well.

David Ogilvy speaks from the past about the future

I just found this video of a film David Ogilvy sent to a conference years ago. The film is very old which adds a huge amount of gravitas to the message. What Ogilvy, the pioneer of Direct Marketing says is still true today, even more so with the dawn of the Internet.

If your marketing is meant to sell products then forget clever creative, flowery copy, cryptic text. Sell the product or service, ask for the response - making it easy to do so. Measuring marketing spend has never been easier than with the Internet, even more so than it is with Direct Mail. Testing is quicker and easier and the results can be in almost instantly.

Take the time to watch David Ogilvy as he talks to you from the past and see how you can apply this to how you are marketing today.

Best Practices for Content Optimisation

Apart for the American spelling I love SEOMoz. Rand has just posted a great article on Best Practices for Content Optimization. His spelling not mine.

It is very detailed and quite techie but the overriding theme is that there is no short cut to getting good ranking. Unique content and a usable site are the only way to get there.

Twitter changing the world

At last the old firms are engaging in face to face marketing using Twitter. Giving direct answers is a big deal for the big companies who love to hide behind carefully crafted press releases, well now they are actively engaging and reaping the rewards

The Financial Times reports how they're doing it

I'm using twitter now myself and 140 words is tough but its getting easier plus its very quick on responses.

Comment spamming

I thought that the practice of content spamming had died. It's unethical, stupid and is done without much thought. On here I have verification for comments, the who ever spammed me had to do it manually. I love people adding comments and links to their own or other sites which help or add to the discussion. That's what blogs are all about as far as I'm concerned.

But just adding a list of keywords with links to your sites and no comments is just dumb. Needless to say I removed the comment spam. My site I'm sure doesn't have much clout but if you want to use whatever it has please do it constructively.

New Facebook? - New Coke?

Just upgraded? to New Facebook.

Not sure if I like it or not. Was old Facebook bad?

There doesn't seem to be any improvement in performance just everything is moved around and I can't find it any more.

The chat function was great when added. But why change the GUI?

What do you think?

A I Hate new Facebook group has already launched.

Been lazy!

I was going to write that I'd been to busy to add to the blog. But that's crap, I've been too lazy.

Lots has happened to me, I've got a new job at Direct Relations, a Marketing Agency, and I'm loving my new role of Senior Account Manager.

My laziness has had a strange effect on the PageRank for the blog. Last time I posted the PR was 0. I guessed that Google had been playing about again, the blog was fresh and looked after.

Nearly 5 months later, my PR is suddenly 3! I've done absolutely nothing to the blog. I know age of site is a factor in Google's algorithm but freshness is supposed to be one too.

As ever I have no concrete explanation.

I'm sure a better bet is to keep your site/blog up to date. Being lazy isn't much of a tactic whatever you do!

List of online marketing books

On Linkedin the other day a question was asked about what were the ultimate books about online marketing. The guy who asked doesn't have a blog so I posted it on mine. This is a pretty impressive list which also includes some of the all time marketing classics. I've not read all of them but it's a great starter list for anyone.

• The Long Tail - by Chris Anderson
• Citizen Marketers - Ben McConnell and Jakie Huba
• Waiting for Your Cat to Bark - Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg
• Word of Mouth Marketing- Andy Sernovitz
• Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging by John Cass
• "Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing" by George Silverman
• Scientific Advertising - Claude Hopkins
• Tested Advertising - John Caples
• How To Write A Good Advertisement - Victor Schwab
• Ogilvy on Advertising - David Ogilvy
• Triggers - Joseph Sugarman
• Breakthrough Advertising - Eugene Schwartz
• The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords – Perry Marshall
• The New rules of marketing and PR: how to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing, & online media to reach buyers directly by David Meerman Scott
• The new influencers : a marketer's guide to the new social media by Paul Gillin
• Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking by Andy Sernovitz
• Smart Start-Ups: How Entrepreneurs and Corporations Can Profit by Starting Online Communities by David Silver.
• The Big Red Fez by Seth Godin