The post Bot Stop – Green Light Your Ad Impressions appeared first on ReThinc Advertising.

I get it. He wants marketing success and he wants to know what to attribute that success to.

To paint a better picture I will go on to say that this is one of our more astute clients. He’s knowledgeable and engaged in what we are doing for his company. Most importantly this client is experiencing marketing success and he recognizes that. The challenge for him and for the rest of the marketing universe is determining exactly where that success is coming from.

The super smart people in this world call this marketing attribution.

The digital space allows people to track conversions from their source. However, when you integrate your digital marketing efforts with traditional assets you can create tracking imperfections. Some people use last click attribution which essentially gives conversion credit to the last action taken by the consumer which can be unfair to the rest of the campaign elements.

The very best way to track your marketing efforts is to use advanced attribution. This concept provides assessment of every component of your ad strategy. It is supported by lots of marketing data and those random symbols and words we shared with you in the first paragraph. The best way for me to describe it is to say that it takes all the measurable data available for a given ad campaign (digital and traditional) and gives you a path for greater efficiency.

Your super smart ad agency should have a clear understanding of your overall marketing goals and be fully capable of evaluating all of the elements of the plan to get you there. That will provide them with a more appropriate path for measurement beyond Facebook likes or unique site visits. At ReThinc we encourage you to have dialogue with your ad agency so they can show you just how super smart they are.

The post Marketing That Gets an “A” for Attribution appeared first on ReThinc Advertising.

What do you mean … not real people? Are you saying my ad was served to Trump supporters? No, your impression count was compromised by something far more sinister … bots.

Bots are merry little virtual minions that have invaded the digital space and are having their way with our websites while we sleep, when our back is turned and yes, even when we are looking right at it. It’s sad really. Unknowingly they are generating millions of impressions on websites that mistakenly think they are more popular than Katy Perry at a fraternity party.

The impact is two-fold. When you are executing a digital ad campaign without our assistance you may think you are performing well but in fact you might be falling woefully short on legitimate impressions. In addition to this, your own site traffic may very well be a lot less than you think. According to the Association of National Advertisers bots can account for up to 70% of all video impressions and up to 30% of digital display ads. Also, according to another recent study, up to 56% of overall site traffic is generated by bots … not potential customers.

But alas … bots are not the end of digital advertising as we know it. Like anything they simply need to be understood and managed. Let’s start with some basics. There are good bots and there are bad bots. It’s important to manage both, that’s why Al Gore invented developers. When buying digital advertising it’s important to ask providers what kind of filters they use to combat bot traffic. Like Al Gore, sometimes they will have answers and sometimes they won’t.

Some good bots are created by God … I mean Google (I get those two mixed up all the time) and other search engines that need to frisk your site for content. These are indexing bots that catalog your content and help people to find specific topics when they search the web. There are also monitoring bots that keep your website running smoothly and alert you to outages. These wonderful little guys can alert you when a bad bot crashes the party. Good bots represent the progression of on-line advertising as it can track things like preferences and behaviors. Facebook has plans to use more of these good bots but that’s a story for another time.

Bad bots are created by what I can only guess are incredibly mean people who were raised in love-less homes. They originate from shadowy parts of the world like Pakistan, Ukraine and Tucson. These bots do a variety of bad things and are categorized as scrapers, form fillers, DDOS, and malware bots. They are there to steal your data, falsify impressions, add content to your site, compromise your forms and even take your site down all together.

Unfortunately, bot traffic can be mistakenly counted as unique visitors, impressions, etc. People who sell you these impressions are rarely forthcoming about bot traffic. It’s probably more accurate to say that most people selling digital ads have no idea what a bot is or what it does.

The truth is you can manage bot traffic, you can’t eliminate them. It’s important to know that good and bad bots can both be damaging to your website. You can better control and monitor bots by calling our digital genius Andrew Gibson. He’ll use words like robot.txt file, captcha, and htaccess.txt. He will also give you a rundown on what you need to know about your website and assist you with your digital ad buy. And for the record, he doesn’t wear skinny jeans or drive a Prius.

The post UP TO BOT – The Good and Bad of Internet Bot Traffic appeared first on ReThinc Advertising.

Since this study is on the internet and was done by a company that has both “media” and “dynamics” in their title, I will give it the proper credit it deserves while adding that they may actually be overstating just how much today’s consumers retains when it comes to ad messages. I think 5% is generous and as the owner of an ad agency I think that number is closer to 1%.

And yet I’m still hearing…“there’s a chance.”

The most important components to aid recall are relevance and creativity. Relevant ad messages gain recall because they are pertinent to their audience. Creative messages enhance recall because they are out of the ordinary. It’s always good to achieve one and it’s an advertising home run when you can do both.

Here’s where I’m going to steer you to a case study. Finish reading this and then click here and see what we were able to do for our friends at North&Co. We were pleased that we could establish geographic relevancy and then draw attention to their ad message by being different from every other real estate bus shelter you ignore each and every day when you drive by them.

It’s imperative that when you advertise that you strive to differentiate your ad message from the other 360 or so that the consumer will see that day. To achieve advertising success start by making sure you are delivering your message to a relevant audience then take steps to be different … that way, you’ll have a chance.

The post Don’t Box Me In appeared first on ReThinc Advertising.

A lot of companies have gone to great lengths to develop tracking software that allow marketers the ability to see just what you are doing on websites, emails and PPC campaigns. Essentially embedded in all of these wonderful methods of marketing to you are tracking tags that communicate to the sender exactly what you are doing with their message. This information is extraordinarily valuable to marketers as it gives us the metrics that determine just what you’re interested in. This allows marketers to target you with specific follow up messages that greatly enhance your likelihood to buy.

For those of you who are not familiar on just how this works let’s use an example from my time at ASU.

Each month the athletic department sends out an email with various content promoting a few different sports and specific upcoming sporting events. You being the good Sun Devil that you are, read the email in its entirety and click through to the information on the upcoming softball home series against the school located in the desert just north of Mexico. This content contains a tracking tag that tells them of your actions. ASU can then do a number of things to encourage you to attend the game by retargeting your browser with a digital ad, sending you a personalized email or depending on the depth of their database, call you directly with a special ticket offer.

This takes the guess work out of their marketing efforts and you as the consumer aren’t entirely bothered by it because it’s relevant to your interests. As a marketer this is a very good thing and as a business owner this is part of the marketing migration to specific ads for specific customers.

This ‘cutting edge’ technology is available to your company as well. At ReThinc, we can track the actions of your messages’ recipients and devise a follow up strategy that will enhance the response. Tracking tags are a tremendous tool for your digital outreach and if you’re not utilizing them you are compromising your ability to establish relevance to your audience.

The post Tag… You’re It! appeared first on ReThinc Advertising.

More often than not, today’s consumers are doing their homework before reaching for their credit card. A quick check of Yelp or Google can decide where you go to eat for dinner and whether you have tacos or tuna salad. These all encompassing review sites grew to be wildly popular so sites with more specificity were soon to follow.

Ad space on these sites tends to blur the lines between review and promote… but make no mistake, consumers know the difference. For the first time in the history of marketing, consumers have a legitimate and audible voice.

As a business owner, you are now faced the need to manage the conversation. This is a critical component to a well balanced marketing strategy. Remember, people who complain are much more likely to post their displeasure than people who are satisfied. It’s best to be diligent in your efforts.

Here are a few simple tips to help your business in this exciting new world we market in:

1. Be proactive. Encourage and incent your customers to talk about you. There are many ways to promote positive conversations about your company.

2. Be prompt. Positive words should get a response and a ‘thank you’; negative ones need immediate attention and reconciliation. Remember, written excuses are just as bad as spoken ones.

3. Win the war, not the battle. Positive customer reviews will over-shadow the few people who are never happy about anything. Work to keep your positive to negative ratios in the 90% range.

4. Use your traditional advertising to support your social initiatives and to drive consumers to your online reviews.

5. Train your employees. It’s a new world out there. Consumers have a voice; let’s make sure that all of your customer contact points understand how important customer service is.

In my opinion review sites are second only to spoken testimonials as far as consumer influence is concerned. A well run marketing plan puts forth the right types of influential messages and backs up the position by making sure that customers are exposed to positive conversations about their goods or services.

The post Can I Yelp You? appeared first on ReThinc Advertising.