GoDaddy, Go! : Super Bowl Ad Teamed with Online Strategy Make a Run for ROI Touchdown

The big game is over but the advertising showdown has just begun. Despite the fact that the return on advertising during Super Bowl is difficult to measure, companies paid an estimated $2.7 million per 30-second spot on the theory that viewers pay as much attention to the commercials as they do to end zone antics. With over 90 million viewers tuned in and 37 brands competing, whose ads will translate into ROI? My bet is on GoDaddy.

GoDaddy.com scored big with Two million hits to the site on Super Bowl Sunday. "Up by a factor of 3.5 times compared to normal," reported GoDaddy founder and CEO Bob Parsons. What did they do right? Maintaining its risque' advertising style, the ads made a clear call to action. After Fox rejected GoDaddy's ad "Exposure," they instead created an ad that told Super Bowl viewers how to see "Exposure" online. Only 6% of companies included a call to action in their commercial, reported Reprise Media, Inc. in its Search Marketing Scorecard (Jan 2008).

In addition, GoDaddy ran full speed in optimizing their online exposure. ComScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, conducted a pre-game survey that revealed 75% of respondents planned to go online on game day. GoDaddy took action and maximized awareness by using search engines, sending out press releases about rejected ads, adding interactive features on the website and later posting blogs and distributing the ads to a wider Internet audience through YouTube, and other social media outlets. "Marketers that overlook search and social media are potentially missing out on a huge opportunity to engage with interested consumers during the game," said Peter Hershberg of Reprise Media.

Advertisers have learned that the Super Bowl is more than a one-shot deal. If the ads drive Web traffic, then it gives a longer return on investment than short-term sales. "For us, because we're an internet company and we sell domain names, there's no way we can really explain what we do in a commercial. We had to get people to our website," said Parsons. Among GoDaddy, other advertisers who connected their ads with online strategies include Pepsi, Cars.com, T-Mobile, Tide and CareerBuilder.

GoDaddy set foot in the Super Bowl arena in 2005 with no previous experience in advertising and paid nearly 5 million for two spots that dared to poke fun of the previous year's half time "wardrobe malfunction" that sparked a crackdown on broadcast indecency. The humor didn't go over well finishing 28 out of 55 ranked in USA Today's Ad Meter, however, the commercial grew its industry market share from 16 percent to 25 percent. The following year, the market share rose to 32 percent and 2007's Super Bowl commercial helped GoDaddy boost to its current 42 percent mark (Cheap Web Hosting Directory, Jan 2008). I look forward to seeing the 2008 results.

Incorporating UGC and Bottom Up Content Strategy into Your Thought Leadership Marketing Programs - Part 2

The first question Doug White asked to the panel of social media experts that initiated a lengthy discussion was, “What was your Ah-ha moment when you realized that your brand needed to have a social media strategy/presence?”

• Lee Aase (Mayo Clinic) mentioned that the Mayo Clinic was already providing syndicated content for broadcast and 60 second radio segments. He went on to say, “A light bulb went on with web video and podcasting... you can let users access the content directly and let them find exactly what they want.” It also helped that the brand has built its reputation primarily by word of mouth over the last 100+ years.

• Rick Short (Indium) took a more philosophical top-line route with his response, “We all naturally generate content. We like to talk and type about things; it costs practically nothing to produce content - blog software, cell phone, digital camera.” He realized four years ago that, “this tidal wave was coming at me...”

• Kevin Hoffberg (Decision Street) was in the middle of writing a book on customer service in 2001 and saw the UGC-developed PowerPoint deck defaming the Doubletree hotel brand. “It got really interesting when the CEO of Hilton saw it and had to start over with customer service training.” He went on to say that consumers are afraid of making ‘wrong’ decisions and that people are desperate to be connected to professional expertise. He left the group with another question, “How do people judge credibility online? We rely on both pure conversations and brand messaging.”

• Chris Curtin (Disney) has the fortunate experience to be tied to a brand that’s been around for 5 decades and is an incredibly viral brand naturally. He mentioned that, “every mechanism associated with UGC is well underway without proactive involvement from the brand,” and moved on to another point, “the better question is how do we interact with it [UGC]?”

Kevin threw out a question to the attendees of the session asking if anyone has been burned by their involvement with UGC and social media.

• Mike Murphy (EarthLink) was quick to respond, “[EarthLink] had to pull back from leveraging UGC. The most enthusiastic customers generally are the participants. We were hoping to have customers help each other resolve issues. There aren’t a lot of enthusiastic customers about internet service providers, because it is a utility. We had concern about negative user feedback, so we didn’t see it as a benefit to the brand.”

• Leisa Glispy (Armstrong) had a great point about the difference between UGC utilization for products v. services, “It’s rare to have a user rave about service, unless it’s truly exceptional. In the case of products, you can change or fix [the product] based on the user feedback.”

White changed the direction by asking about how to overcome obstacles with teaching your internal team or executive board about the importance of UGC tactics.

• Lee, “When I signed up for Facebook and found out I already had 11,000 members in my Mayo Clinic network - that was my real Ah-ha; why not trust people to publicly communicate? It can help improve the reach of your brand when you trust that your people are doing the right thing.”

• Barb Murphy (Weyforth-Haas), “It’s been easier to introduce the customer insight piece as a point of entry to help broaden the vision; for BtoB customers you have to start with the business decision and then translate the leadership team to understand the customer perception.”

• Kevin went on to say, “From an objective standpoint, it’s not hard based on stats. At the end of the day, we are all anecdotal thinkers and influenced by stories. Show them [your executive team] the Facebook page or take them somewhere to see it first hand.” He also mentioned it is a good idea to leverage personal experiences to craft your story.
  

• Leisa had a couple of additional food for thought points, “The technology will make it a part of daily life; authenticity is one of the biggest game changers.” She also brought up an interesting idea of syndication across multiple community sites, relating it to the disconnect that can sometimes happen between your identity on Facebook v. LinkedIn v. MySpace, etc.

Best Practices/Take Aways

• Lee, “Join the Frost group on Facebook as part of your homework from this event.”

• Kevin - “Get Flock, the uber cool social media web browser, layered on the Firefox backend.” (As a side note, I’ve been using this browser since it launched - I highly recommend it to anyone reading this).

• Chris, “Make sure you fully understand your brand. Don’t chase trends. Figure out what your [brand] voice should be and bring it to all spaces.”

• Rick, “Begin at the end. Don’t jump it because it’s the topic of the day - begin with your goal.”

Incorporating UGC and Bottom Up Content Strategy into Your Thought Leadership Marketing Programs

My colleague, Doug White, recently hosted a panel at Frost & Sullivan's Executive MindXChange in Phoenix. The prestigious, UGC experts leading the conversation included:

Kevin Hoffberg of Decision Street, Kevin's blog
Lee Aase of Mayo Clinic, Lee's Blog
Christopher Curtin of The Walt Disney Company
Richard Short of Indium Corporation, Rick's blog

To establish the context for the very engaging conversation that ensued, the following stats were shared:

• Technorati tracks 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media. – Technorati website 11/15/2007


• 175,000 new blogs created each day. - That’s over 2 new blogs per second created each day! . – Technorati website 11/15/2007


• Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second. . – Technorati website 11/15/2007


• 61% of Internet searchers think that SEO listings are more relevant – iProspect


• As of December 18, 2007 There were estimated to be over 200 million MySpace profiles - Wikipedia


• At peak, MySpace had over 230,000 new registrations added each day - Wikipedia


• 25% of users reported online video as one of the top 3 activities performed online – Forrester 2006


• Broadband Content and Services 2007, six out of ten high speed Internet users watch/download online video content at least once a week compared to 45% in 2006 - Center for Media Research – 01.09.2008
  


• Penetration of video-enabled handheld (portable) devices is on the rise as is viewing of video content on these devices. 27% of Internet users have a cell, iPod/MP3 player, or PDA with video capability, and an additional 23% do not have this capability but are interested in getting it. - Oct. 2007 - Horowitz Associates Report

Stay tuned for Part 2, summarizing the panel discussion.

Top Tips for Creating Hot Podcasts

In a recent meeting of the minds Paul Dunay, Director of Global Field Marketing for Bearing Point discloses the top 11 tips for podcasting. The following are the pointers I found most valuable.

1. Make sure to do a killer intro for your podcast.
2. Always remember that the primary goal of the podcast, to establish yourself and your organization as a thought leader.
3. Make good use of audience feedback and apply it to make improvements.
4. Remember trust is key when developing a relationship with your audience.
5. Elaborate on the content of your podcast with supporting materials on your website.
6. Absolutely NO selling in podcasts.
7. Be thought provoking and proactive.
8. Keep podcasts conversational and engaging.

Dunay concluded with the idea that "If you're going to commit to doing podcasts, then keep that commitment and don't give up. Keep them going." Wise words that will help you maintain credibility.

"Twitter Strikes Community Chord" But for What?

A recent article in BtoB magazine discusses the uses that twenty-somethings are now leveraging the tool for. It points out that twitter is another inexpensive channel marketers can tap into and the growing popularity for peers giving each other 'tweets' on their day to day lives.

After it's debut earlier this year at South by Southwest, marketers had high hopes for the new medium but the article cites one of the few instances of value the tool has been used for since then, as the first channel used to spread word of a bay area earthquake. While it may be striking a chord with small circles of friends I think we're still a ways away from creating a full blown community around Twitter and reaching its full potential in making it a viable communication tool.

Online Marketing '08: Techniques of the Future

According to a recently published piece from the Center for Media Research here are the top five prediction trends of online advertising for 2008 (in no particular order).

1. Taking database marketing to the next level - We've managed to wrap our heads around the do's and don'ts of keeping a clean database, now its time we really leverage the information gathered and deliver on the promise of a true 1:1 marketing experience

2. UGC no longer labeled inappropriate for most brands - revered for being super affordable, marketers are now exploring ways to incorporate UGC in a more brand-safe way while still reaching precise target audiences.

3. Local advertising - no seriously, local at its finest. Local users on national sites will be shown ads for local businesses relevant to their interests in turn creating more applicable results for the user and more affordable options for advertisers on sites that were normally out of their budget.

4. Metrics galore - whether your justifying a spend to your boss or trying to decide your future media budget, check metrics beyond just clicks to help decipher how to best influence your customer and appeal to their emotions to coax them through the sales funnel.

5. Virtual worlds - expected to become more populated as people begin to focus on specialty worlds associated with their personal interests. Can you say effortless precision targeting?

Mobile Advertising: Part 2

To elaborate on a previous post discussing the growth trends of the use of mobile internet and specifically the advertising trends and opportunities I found another article of interest.

According to the Center for Media Research 2008 will be the year we see mobile solutions focused on local advertisers. Sooner than you think, you will be able to search for a local restaurant without being flooded with national advertisements. Dilip DaSilva, founder and CEO of Exponential, uses the term "vertical local" or "hyper local" to describe the level of granularity that will become the norm for mobile marketers.

As local users are shown display ads of local businesses relevant to their interests, local CPC (cost per click) will evolve to be a major factor in 2008. Proponents of the new model argue this will be a huge opportunity for smaller and medium sized businesses to advertise on site that they normally wouldn't have been able to take advantage of in the past.