Archive for the ‘User Engagement’ Category
When Members Pay Attention
10 Feb 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
I’m a little late on my Super Bowl commentary. (The Saints won, in case you hadn’t heard.) I’m also late on the other morning-after topic of the commercials—lots of guys wearing their underpants and some bizarre screaming chickens. But there is a more evergreen association idea in there, really there is.
My viewing companion, the world’s biggest commercial avoider, asked why anyone would spend $2.8 million for a 30 second slot. I said that advertising is, of course, more complicated than this but when you get up into those sorts of numbers, it becomes very simple.
- Is your target audience watching?
- Are they paying attention?
One of the big selling points of a Super Bowl commercial is that advertisers are guaranteed that viewers will be paying attention and not in the bathroom or getting snacks or checking their email. It may be the one broadcast where we actually watch the commercials. So if you are targeting mostly men, skewing younger—beer, soft drinks, fast food, video games, cell phones and an irreverent take on personal investing—this is your moment. Expensive but worth it.
This year, however, Pepsi gave up on the Super Bowl after 23 years. Instead, Pepsi has budgeted $20 million for Project Refresh, a social media campaign that will give grants in six areas in line with its CSR goals. They feel that everyone knows who they are. They don’t need brand awareness; they need engagement.
Admittedly, engagement is a vague terms that gets vaguer as it is over used. But ask yourself three questions.
- What does your association brand need? Awareness? Engagement? Clarification? Stability? Positioning?
- Where is your target audience?
- What are they really paying attention to?
Chances are you don’t have $20 million to spend, but if you did, how would you spend it most wisely to build your brand? Should you do the whole panoply of promotional marketing: advertising, PR, direct mail, social media? Or should you throw everything at the one big game when you know they’ll be there?
Measure Engagement
16 Jun 2009
by Rebecca Rolfes
We all talk about engagement. Engaged members are the most loyal and likely to renew. Engaged users comment on blogs, rate articles, forward interesting things to others. Engagement leads to activity.
But how to measure it?
Amount of input by users divided by the amount of output by editors equals engagement.
Statistics that Lie
27 Apr 2009
by Rebecca Rolfes
McKinley Marketing, which shares space with the Association Forum of Chicagoland, just published the results of a study about associations and the economy. Not surprisingly, associations envision downturns in meeting attendance and sponsorships and plan budget cuts and possibly layoffs.
What caught my attention are Key Finding #5 and Key Finding #6.
#5 says that direct mail, event marketing and PR are considered the most effective tactics to accomplish association goals and that online media tactics are the least effective.
#6 says that spending on traditional marketing tactics (those mentioned in #5) will be cut and spending on digital media will increase.
Excuse me. The tactics that respondents find the most effective are losing their funding and the thing they find least effective is gaining funding.
- Is digital ineffective because associations haven’t devoted enough resources to it and think it will be more successful if they do?
- Is digital gaining funding because it’s a fad?
- Is it gaining funding because it looks cheap next to printing and mailing?
- Do associations think digital can beat the 1%-2% return from direct mail?
- Are traditional methods considered more effective because the traditional marketing types make up most of the respondents and that’s what they have the most experience with?
Studies like this remind me of a book I read in college called How to Lie With Statistics. The point was that you can find data that supports any thesis you want to put forth. If you want to say that traditional marketing tactics are the most effective, this study is your proof. If you want to say that digital media is the wave of the future, this study is also your proof.
What’s missing is some analysis. Statisticians will insist that numbers don’t lie. But they do when they contradict each other–especially within two points of the same study.
