Back in January, Heidi Cohen published in ClickZ her list for the 7-Top Online Marketing Trends for this year: Social media growth will come from expanded niche products. Search marketing will continue to extend its reach into other formats, including social, local, and mobile search. Analytics and related measurements will become more sophisticated. Behavioral targeting will become more widespread and will provide improved customer experiences, offering customers more relevant information to consumers and better targeted ads to marketers. Integration of on- and offline will continue as retailers update technology. E-mail communications will evolve. The market will disrupted by a new technology or a shift in how existing products are used. Moreover, she highlights some of the main metrics to measure: customers, revenues, expenses, margins, external factors and buzz. For a more in-deep explanation on each one read ClickZ
The Coke Zero Game
Coca Cola Zero Germany has created a really cool advergame for the Euro 2008 Soccer tournament. This creation mixes a good interface, video, 3D and music and is a good reference for high quality entertainment online. As everything, it has it’s downside: the required download bandwidth. Nevertheless it is worth to try it. Select the “standard” option to be able to play without registering. Via RandomCulture and Adverblog
Principles for Success in Social Marketing
R. Craig Lefebvre pointed out recently in his blog the 15 principles for success in social marketing, according to the 3rd edition of the Phil Kotler and Nancy Lee’s book “Social Marketing”. Take advantage of prior and existing successful campaigns. Start with target markets most ready for action. Promote single, simple, doable behaviors – one at a time. Identify and remove barriers to behavior change. Bring real benefits into the present. Highlight costs of competing behaviors. Promote a tangible good or service to help target audiences perform the behavior. Consider nonmonetary incentives in the form of recognition and appreciation. Make access easy. Have a little fun with messages. Use media channels at the point of decision making. Try for popular/entertainment media. Get commitments and pledges. Use prompts for sustainability. Track results and make adjustments. For comments on each principle read the post here, or get the book.
Let’s have TXT
Virgin Mobile in the US has launched an interesting website to promote their TXT service during the Valentine’s Day. The purpose of the site is to help people learn the fine art of sexy texting while promoting their cell phones and text messaging plans. A really good idea and implementation to engage users. Try it. Via ViralBlog
The future of mobile: QR Codes
Random Culture has an interesting post about Quick Response Codes, which are being used extensively in Europe and Japan for mobile marketing campaigns. These codes, created in Japan in 1994 by Denso-Wave are being used in marketing for mobile users to take a picture of the code or read a the codes with the cameras to trigger action on their mobiles, it could be to download some piece of content, get a message or go to a website. QR Codes might be placed in magazines, buses, signs, business cards to let users with the special software installed on the mobile to capture the image and executed the desired action. For more information go to Random Cuture or the Wikipedia.
Being creative with Adwords
One of the leading car rental companies in Europe, Sixt, have found ways to be remarkable when they experimented with a new way to make their Google Adwords ads stand out from the crowd. As Coolz0r said, pretty clever.
Getting paid for blogging
Wired’s magazine issue 16.02 comes with some great articles, one of those talks about the initiative proposed by PayPerPost by which bloggers subscribed to this network are being paid for each post they make related to some of the products of the brands associated to the service. A really interesting concept that might come into a real good business. This blogging schema has been put on doubt because it might harm the authenticity of the blogosphere, but the founders of the service claim that they require bloggers to disclosure their relationship with PayPerPost for every post they are getting paid of. For more information, read Wired.
New Beetle: 10 years celebration
The New Beetle is ten years old and Volkswagen Mexico has launched a limited numbered edition to celebrate. They have also launched a special website for us to visit. A really good development with cool animations and transitions. Shame on the flash loaders, that are so hidden that the common user might not see them. (hint: see the blue bar at the top) The New Beetle is ten years old. New, yes, because time goes on and it keeps looking completely different from others. It is so new that keeps liking you so much as the first time you saw it. And that is for celebrating. Do you remember the first time you saw it? For the first time, a car that didn’t seem like any other, it was completely different. “Like ten years ahead”, you said. Almost like twenty, don’t you think so? Wait another ten years and you’ll see. In the meanwhile, Seguir leyendo
10 usability nightmares…
Smashing Magazine published a few months ago an interesting list of usability nightmares that you should be aware of: Hidden log-in link One of the most used links (if not the most) should be always placed in a relevant and visible position. Pop-ups for content presentation It is really not a good idea to open a pop-up window to show the content, at the end, browsers nowadays block automatically that kind of javascripts and so you’re forced to use the famous “if the window has not opened click here”. Dragging instead of vertical navigation There are some flash enthusiast that keep going under the idea that the user has to “discover” the way a site must be used. The dragging technique claims to break the scrolling paradigm and let users interact with the page dragging it instead of scrolling. This might become a new trend in the future but for Seguir leyendo
Simplify your work
Microsoft has launched a new website to promote Office 2008 for Mac. A really good approach with the simplification methaphora. The bad thing is when you want to “learn more” about the product, you are redirected to the traditional (and not-so-simplified) MS website. Simplify your Work Via Cpluv