OPS Urban Gardeners Plant Sale Poster
Promotional poster advertising a sales event for the Ontario Public Service Urban Gardeners to educate people about the seedlings, provide them with samples to plant in their gardens, and raise awareness of the group.
I’ve advertised on internet video channels and here are benefits I found you can consider when media planning for internet TV and radio.
Some people just prefer to listen to free internet radio and watch TV online. They’re usually young people who have modern technology and don’t use radios or have or can afford cable TV. If those people are your target audience, the digital channel is important for your campaign and you’ll want people clicking on your online ads or going to the campaign landing page.
Thanks to services like Google Analytics, you can find out easily your ad’s engagement, impressions, and return on investment.
YouTube and other internet media offer you detailed information on people viewing and clicking on your ads (e.g. gender, age, interests). It is worthwhile to run campaign just to see which audiences prefer your brand and style of advertising. I’ve received a lot of marketing data from internet media companies by running ads.
You’re getting real time data about ad impressions and clicks. You can easily test different ads and change them on the fly unlike traditional media. Your ad viewers are one click away from your website and the real time nature can aid in campaigns that are time sensitive.
Most strong brands have videos and sounds clips online already. You can reuse parts or your organization’s existing media (e.g. popular YouTube videos) for an internet TV/radio ad.
photo credit: David Berkowitz
So now that you’re exciting about making some ads, here tips based on data from past internet campaigns. One insight is very few people will listen or watch a whole internet ad so:
1. Front load important information and in the first 3-5 seconds of the ad. People who are really interested in your product will watch the rest if they need to.
2. The first part of the ad should have catchy visuals and/or sounds to capture your audience or allow them to self-select whether the ad is relevant to them. Here are examples – show a map to indicate a location, choose music to represent your product category’s environment, use text or voice to summarize the ad’s topic or provide a hook.
3. Be open to trying different variations of ads and then use the most successful one (one with the most clicks or engagement). My experience with 2-3 variations of ads is over time 1 will become the preferred one. An easy variation can be to alter the duration of the ad.
I kind of specialize in low cost advertising and marketing promotion production after working for non-profits and promoting employee programs where there is no budget other than people to do the work who are usually volunteers and basic equipment like cameras, printers, and computers. Here are tips I use to make the most of common supplies with a zero to low advertising budget.
Use as much free stuff as possible like open source/free software, creative commons media, sponsored materials, public domain media (sound clips, videos).
Partner with other organizations to lower the cost of their advertising and combine marketing plans to strengthen their market presence. For example, a tourism organization I work with partners with regional tourism groups and the provincial government to promote their area.
“Who you know” — Ask your team about their talents, especially their hobbies outside of work. You’d be surprised how many people outside their work are talented musicians, video editors, photographers, renovators, etc. who can donate their time or have contacts with people who can provide low cost advertising materials.
photo credit: J. Star
Be simple with your ads and use a casual everyday scenarios, lighting, and scenes for yours ads. A recent ad by President’s Choice is a good example. It was Galen Weston Jr. sitting in a well-lit kitchen talking to two women about the new product – – that’s it!
Use your archives and find older ads and media. Is there something you can reuse and recycle?
Set up a common repository of advertising stories, media, materials, etc. for your organization. It’s common to share a stock photography and video library.
photo credit: Kalexanderson
Combine marketing campaigns with an advertising partner. Ideas to combine are direct mail campaigns, out-of-home media, events, and commercials.
Use free open source software. Lots of choices for creative people on different computer platforms (online web tools, Windows, Linux, Mac)
Ask your corporate/organization’s sponsors to help you with events by providing materials you can use for promotion. My sponsors commonly pay for printing of posters if you include them in the poster and thank them for sponsorship.
Borrow and Share. Do search on the internet for ads that resemble yours and adapt their designs or approach to your brand.
Use Bing/Yahoo, Facebook, or Google promotional coupons for free digital advertising. Usually they provide $50 of free advertising for new sign ups. You can sign up, use the free $50 and continue if you like.
Use social media to get input from customers. Not an innovative idea, but getting input either through voting, a contest, or reward system is a win-win for the company and consumer. Plus, you can get good publicity from asking for input.
The list below provide sources to be used with the development of electronic / web / online marketing as well as integrated electronic communications.
Google Advertising Programs (AdSense and AdWords) and Microsoft Advertising provide a variety of advertising opportunities both through search engine marketing (SEM), TV ads, content network ads, website banners ads, and other channels like mobile, games, etc..
Google Alerts allows you to monitor the web for interesting new content via email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. Alerts can be used to monitor marketing campaigns and web
activity (e.g. competitors, trends, social commentary).
Copy blogger contains tips for copywriters, bloggers, and content marketers and aims to give effective online copywriting and content marketing strategies.
Radian 6 offers paid tools for social media monitoring. The tools allow you view relevant conversations on selected topics and aggregate and report on those
conversations allowing easier analysis and measurement.
Social Oomph helps manage your social media efforts through scheduling, links management, monitoring, a channel synchronization among other things. The are free features and paid features.
TweetDeck is a tool for managing social media feeds, viewing profiles and updates, and performing interactions in one tool. It is available for deskops and some mobile platforms. It makes it easy to monitor various social media networks in one place and is particularly strong in using Twitter API features.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (Version 2.0) provide principles and content
techniques to ensure content is inclusive to various people including people
with disabilities and the ways they consume web content. The principles are
also standard practices to follow to make web content easily accessible,
usable, and understandable.
UseIt.com is about usability and web design research, studies, news, and guidelines.
Website grader is a website search engine optimization (SEO) tool that tells how well a website is doing for things like SEO, social media mentions and popularity, and page analytics.
What in the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton on April 29, 2011 captured people’s attentions and emotions ?
What would engage an estimated 2 billion people who watched or listened to live media broadcasts of the wedding?
Specifically, it is the story of two young people in love and their celebration of marriage. The wedding represented love, happiness, and promise of partnership between William and Kate. Given the people involved and their relations and backgrounds, there was pomp and magnificent displays, but the wedding could also be considered to show the pleasures of a modern, elegant, and down to earth wedding. The celebration also contained the hope for a bright future for the couple in the British monarchy and the royal family of the Commonwealth realms.
The media, marketing channels, and event organizers recognized the story of the royal wedding and how it could engage people.
People around the world like those in the Commonwealth of Nations wanted to capture emotions and moments of the royal wedding or experience parts of it through:
To cater to this audience, events, products, and buzz were generated.
Events were held in the spirit of the royal wedding from children’s events, schools, businesses, and entertainment venues and outdoor parties with people dressing up, combining events with the media broadcasts, and majestic decorations and accessories among other things.
Commercial products were promoted featuring the wedding in some way similar to the events. Advertisers also used the wedding and royal elements in their marketing tie-ins and to prepare for the upcoming spring and summer season of weddings.
Souvenirs and memorabilia were also made to celebrate the event.
The wedding dominated social discussions, media, and social media on the internet (e.g. Twitter #RoyalWedding hashtag) in the weeks around the royal wedding in April and May 2011 ensuring it was in the minds of many people plugged into media or those interacting with people (word of mouth) who were engaged by the royal wedding.
The large amount of engagement and buzz the royal wedding generated shows a story of love and the celebration of a royal wedding between two young people with respectable backgrounds can capture the hopes, emotions, hearts, and attentions of millions (if not billions) of people.
The Wikipedia article of the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton cites several interesting metrics from news sources about how engaging the royal wedding was:
Below is a Google AdWords campaign strategy and post-campaign report for a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign for the Canadian Women’s Hockey League.
The AdWords marketing campaign was planned and done by a team I was in for the Google Online Marketing Challenge and also as part of a web marketing class at the University of Toronto taught by Michelle Pellettier.
| Total Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Avg. CPC | Avg. Pos. |
| 2,125,296 for Search and Display network | 337 | 0.02% | US$0.51 | 2.2 |
| 10,278 for Search only | 130 | 1.26% | US$0.65 | 2.7 |
Ad Group Name / Ad |
Target Audience interests |
Clicks |
Impressions |
CTR% |
Avg. CPC |
Avg Pos. |
|
Unbeatable prices
Affordable Hockey
4-day weekend women’s hockey action
Buy Clarkson Cup tickets from $10!
|
Ticket buying | 27 | 399,555 | 0.01 | US$0.62 | 2.2 |
|
Scotiabank Sponsored Hockey
Scotiabank Hockey
Exciting Clarkson Cup 2011
March 24th – 27th, Barrie Ontario
|
Social responsibility, sponsors | 72 | 437,421 | 0.02 | US$0.62 | 1.8 |
|
CWHL Elite Players
Women’s Hockey Olympians
See Elite Players in Women’s Hockey
This Weekend Only! March 26-27
|
Female hockey players / Olympians | 78 | 404,324 | 0.02 | US$0.69 | 2.1 |
|
CWHL – Women’s Hockey Action
Women’s Hockey Action
Get tickets now! Low prices $10-$25
Call 705 739 4220 ext 4617
|
Women’s Hockey League games | 30 | 294,341 | 0.01 | US$0.60 | 2.3 |
|
Championship Results
Barrie Molson Centre
MTL defeats TOR 5-0 for hockey cup.
View all championship stats here!
|
After event results | 56 | 466,896 | 0.01 | US$0.52 | 2.5 |
|
Championship Match
Barrie Molson Centre
Who will rule the ice? TOR vs MON
Today @ 1pm, Buy tickets only $15!
|
Event matches and tickets | 19 | 118,800 | 0.02 | US$0.47 | 2.2 |
|
Barrie Molson Centre Games
Barrie Molson Centre
Hockey fun for the whole family
Women’s Hockey Championship – $10
|
Hockey games in Geo. location | 55 | 3,959 | 1.39 | US$0.53 | 3.7 |
