The Science of Influence And Persuasion #AMDays |  |
- The Science of Influence And Persuasion #AMDays
- Marketing for Mobile Apps #AMDays
- Small Businesses Lag on Sustainability: What To Do About It
- Newest Adware and Affiliate Marketing Abuses From #AMDays
- Jennifer Roberts of Collective Intellect: Influencing Behavior
- What Happens to the Supply Chain?
- Spreading Your Brand Like a Zombie Apocalypse
| The Science of Influence And Persuasion #AMDays Posted: 09 Mar 2012 06:00 PM PST Editor's Note: More hot-off-the-press live coverage from the Affiliate Management Days conference. The science of influence and persuasion is the topic in this, the 7th article in the series. This series of articles is on topics of interest to businesses that offer affiliate programs. More coverage of #AMDays.
We’re wrapping up the last session of day two. 6 Major Categories of Persuasion: 1. RECIPROCITY
2. COMMITMENT AND CONSISTENCY
3. SOCIAL PROOF
4. LIKING
5. AUTHORITY
6. SCARCITY AND FEAR
To find out more about the science of influence and persuasion, check out InfoChachkie.com. From Small Business Trends |
| Marketing for Mobile Apps #AMDays Posted: 09 Mar 2012 05:00 PM PST Editor's Note: This is another installment of live coverage from the Affiliate Management Days conference. This is the 6th article in the series and this one covers marketing for mobile apps. These articles are on topics of interest to businesses that offer affiliate programs. More coverage of #AMDays.
Why is mobile important? And why should you know the impact that marketing your brand with the help of your affiliates is important? Peter Hamilton, CMO of HasOffers, not only has answers, but has experience to share. He let us know that 2011 has been the year of mobile explosion. In 2011, there were more cell phones than people on the planet and smart phones outpaced feature phones. What does that mean? More people are carrying devices capable of managing your brand application than ever – and the future is only going to be better. Peter provided an interesting statistic that people download more than 65 apps to their phone and that the average time they spend on it can reach four and a half minutes! Compared to most time on a site, that is precious brand engagement time. How was all that time leverage in the marketing realm? With over 1.4 billion in 2011 spent on mobile advertising. Why so much? Because mobile saw statistics like this: clicks up 711%, Requests up 698%, Revenues up 522%. These are all huge increases driven by mobile interaction. Mobile Web vs. Mobile Apps We all know that our sites are already available on mobile web, some of us even have mobile web optimized sites, so what is so appealing about an application? For starters, users prefer the usage and organization apps over mobile web. They also create an opportunity for customers to interact (aka "waste some time") directly with your brand offline. There is no shortage of mobile apps on the market. Sure, they started as video games like Angry birds, Farmville and the like, but strong brands are now on the market as well. With the likes of The Washington Post, Wal-Mart, Target, eBay, Facebook, CNN, Marvel, Electronic Arts, and Sony who have brought the mainstream into play. These brands not only get interaction with their customer based on static content, but can – through the phones interactive features – involve them in tactile interaction as well, creating a whole new realm of possibilities. But what does that increase? How about conversion rates. How about more accurate segmentation and targeted marketing? Users can be advertised to based on their exact location, based on GPS connectivity with the device. Mobile apps are a lead gen capture tool that are more powerful than you may initially give credit for. They allow you to push notifications via the app, inform customers of geo specials, and get valuable interaction data. To be very clear though, all of the information that you need to gather needs to be clearly spelled out in your applications terms of service agreement. Now where you would have gotten a lead, you get an app install. Where you get an email you get a phone number. Where you had a sale on site you get an in-app purchase, and where you used to do an email blast you can do real-time notifications. All of these abilities have great payouts. High conversion rates, seamless branding experience, higher lead lifetime value, higher average order values, longer customer life. If you're still curious if this is going to help you. Check out your Google analytics and see how much traffic is coming from mobile – now compare that to last year. Ok, so an app is worth it. How do I get my app noticed? And after it is noticed, how do I track what engagements are out there? That's where MobileAppTracking.com comes into play. After you have an app created and loaded into the Apple and Android markets, this service (costing a tiny .05 to .01 per install single fee) can now allow you to use your existing affiliate base as promoters for your new app. Instantly this connects you to the core of your market and incentivizes your affiliates to help you acquire accounts and app downloads well beyond regular channel abilities. The Key to the whole app though, is being able to leverage the information that they provide with a proper tracking soft ware. With the FTC privacy concerns, and new legislation that is headed for the capital later this year you need to operate with someone that is already ahead of the game and in compliance with possible regulation. Mobile app tracking has that and an incredible ability to help you target your desired audience with laser precision. Mobile and tablets are moving and will be set to soon out pace desktop computers. It isn't so much a matter of if anymore – but when. Sure HTML 5 is coming and it looks good, but the console experience you get from a mobile device is something a 21 inch monitor just can't provide. Especially if you are looking at securing the future of your brand in and connecting with a younger, more tech savvy market. From Small Business Trends |
| Small Businesses Lag on Sustainability: What To Do About It Posted: 09 Mar 2012 11:30 AM PST All the recent headlines about corporate sustainability initiatives are encouraging: Fortune 500 companies are embracing environmental sustainability like never before, investing millions of dollars in greener operations and making sustainability a key part of their business strategy.
"Nearly every large company has shown some commitment to sustainability," author Andrew Winston recently told a Huffington Post blogger. "They’re all engaged on some level now, with most having a senior executive responsible in some way." Great news. (Of course, many experts don't think Corporate America's sustainability efforts are ambitious enough, which I'll discuss another time.) But when you look at the landscape of small businesses across the country, sustainability isn't nearly as prevalent as it seems in the corporate world. Sure, some small businesses have jumped on board and are leagues ahead when it comes to energy efficiency and conservation. But plenty of them have done practically nothing to go green. They continue to operate the same way they've operated for 10, 20 or 50 years. They haven't upgraded their lights or equipment or even undertaken the lowest-cost sustainability initiatives. A survey last year by MIT's Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group found that only 9% of companies with fewer than 1,000 employees fully embrace sustainability. What's going on? Why are small businesses falling behind? For one thing, it's more of an uphill battle for many small businesses to devote the time and resources to sustainability – and some just don't feel it's important in the grand scheme. Here's a look at two main challenges small businesses face when it comes to implementing sustainable practices, along with some potential solutions: Challenge #1: Time. Many small business owners are so busy that they simply can't devote time to researching and implementing sustainable practices. Solution: The obvious answer is "make time for it." But that's easier said than done. There are some resources that can guide small businesses through key steps related to sustainability. Consider joining a local business sustainability networking group, which many cities and communities now have. Also take advantage of free consulting: Many universities offer business sustainability-related majors and thus have students looking for real-world experience. Some small companies can take on summer interns to help them conduct research and put together sustainability initiatives. More nonprofits are also springing up devoted to helping local small businesses go green. Challenge #2: Money. Despite quick paybacks on some energy upgrades, such as lighting, many small businesses can't spare the upfront investment costs. Solution: Many utility companies now offer their small business customers free or low-cost energy audits, along with rebates and financing programs to help them make energy upgrades with minimal upfront costs. Also consider some federal tax incentives for businesses that make energy upgrades, and check with your city or local government to see whether it has loan or rebate programs for green business projects. The DSIRE database makes it easy to find financial incentives in your city or state.
From Small Business Trends |
| Newest Adware and Affiliate Marketing Abuses From #AMDays Posted: 09 Mar 2012 10:00 AM PST Editor's Note: We’re covering the Affiliate Management Days conference — and this is the 5th article in the series of our “live” coverage. These articles are on topics of interest to businesses that offer affiliate programs. More coverage of #AMDays.
It’s day two at the new Affiliate Marketing Convention, AMDays – a conference created to help affiliate managers and ecommerce merchants better understand how to be successful in the performance based marketing industry. Below are my notes from Ben’s very interesting session on the issues faced by affiliate managers of the fraud front: Why affiliate marketing?
Affiliates earn commissions if three things happen:
Issues in affiliate marketing:
Cookie dropping / cookie stuffing happens in:
Popups and cookie dropping happen with a variety of tools such as:
In 2006, an affiliate cheated eBay of $10.5 million in commissions from cookie dropping. This affiliate is now in court in a legal battle over these payouts. Nothing has been settled yet. Supervising affiliates:
Strategies to dealing with these guys:
Who has a take in it?
For the next few days there will be more examples, perpetrators and infractions on BenEdelman.org. Be sure to check out your own programs on his site to see how clean your program actually is. From Small Business Trends |
| Jennifer Roberts of Collective Intellect: Influencing Behavior Posted: 09 Mar 2012 08:30 AM PST Social media is all the rage, but it isn’t just fun and games. Understanding your customer's intentions and reactions can be crucial to the success of your campaigns and tapping into that can have a longer term impact or influence on the conversation than you ever imagined. Tune in as Jennifer Roberts of Collective Intellect joins Brent Leary for an in-depth discussion on the importance of social media analytics. * * * * *
Jennifer Roberts: I have been at Collective Intellect for nearly two years as their marketing manager and started off at Sun Microsystems doing web development and web marketing for nearly 10 years. Collective Intellect is a social media and text analytics company. We help our customers better understand their customers' intentions and expressions of behavior so they can make better strategic and tactical decisions based on this intelligence. Small Business Trends: Collective Intellect ran something called the "Collective Intellect Super Sunday Ad Tracker" in conjunction with CNBC. Can you tell us about it? Jennifer Roberts: It was designed to measure the influence of ad campaigns prior to the big game and then after. We did a slightly different take on the traditional ranking system that you might have seen with the Ad Bowl by looking at not only the share of conversation (volume ranking of how often the campaign was talked about), but how consumers were talking about the brand. By extension, understanding how expressions of their intention, purchasing language, viewing behavior and volume activity translated into the definition of the engaged customer. Small Business Trends: Can you explain what engaged consumers are versus total buzz? Jennifer Roberts: The engaged consumer metric is a value that represents the social indicators we created specifically for the ads for the Super Bowl. We created indicators around affinity, favorites, purchasing language, funny, viewing intent, offensiveness and favorability. What we were trying to do is isolate and extract conversations relating to how customers were reacting to a brand. We ranked those indicators in the engaged consumer index, so our client could see a couple of days before the big game how the advertising was impacting customer expressions around the intent to purchase. Did that change as the ad was promoted on You Tube or was showing during the Super Bowl? And how long after the game did the consumers continue to express and interest in purchasing or viewing? Small Business Trends: Chrysler was one of the most popular, but it also looks like it was one of the top ones on the offensive list? Jennifer Roberts: Yes, what happened was kind of interesting and quite amusing. The Chrysler ad seemed to generate a lot of conversation, but it wasn’t until Karl Rove actually reacted unfavorably to the ad that it prompted a lot of discussion and a lot of conversation from the social media universe. When Karl Rove was offended by the ad people got on and started conversing how they were offended that Karl Rove was offended, so we have a whole indicator dedicated to capturing consumers that were sensing offensiveness. Although they were not really offended by the ad, they were offended by Karl Rove. So we we're still able to extract that conversation and extract that language the customer was using, and see how other variables had impacted the campaign. So there is the ad and then there are individuals who can impact the discussion. Small Business Trends: One influential person actually drove the discussion around the unfavorableness and offensiveness. Jennifer Roberts: Yes, absolutely. I think that brings the real interesting point that social media is extending the conversation in terms of encouraging on traditional media and within the social media sphere. It's not like he really was advertising or campaigning in an isolated incident. It is really a conversation continued both before and long after the campaign. It is critical for a company to realize that they can have a longer term impact or influence on the conversation than they ever imagined, just by tapping into social media. Understanding what consumers are saying specifically around their behavior or actions or response to a campaign. Small Business Trends: Purchase language. Can you explain that a little bit? Jennifer Roberts: We were looking for words where the customer is saying "I want to purchase, I want to buy" or any kind of variations on that, which is their particular charm. We are able to identify, collect and categorize that under an indicator. What is the purchase intent? Small Business Trends: M&M's comes up quite a bit on the positive side of things. Are there some good takeaways here? Jennifer Roberts: One thing we notice is people want to laugh. They wanted it to be funny. Most of the time, the ads that resonated most from the viewers were funny. They were lighthearted and created the most positive reaction within our indicators. Small Business Trends: So let's look at the flip side. If we look at Go Daddy, what kind of things should be avoided? Jennifer Roberts: Most obviously I think tattoos and young women don't resonate well with audiences. They’ve gone down a particular path to really pushing the envelope as far as their advertising campaigns. It just seems like the content of their advertising wasn’t soliciting the right response. Small Business Trends: If you are a smaller company, what are the take aways to figure out how to create the experiences that have positive buzz, customer engagement, and also lead to that purchasing opportunity? Jennifer Roberts: For a smaller company, it is really looking at it strategically – where they want to invest their time and energy or adoption in the usage of social media. Understanding the metrics of social media within the context of the overall marketing and business strategy and really trying to tie any outreach efforts they have to other metrics within the business. To move beyond just monitoring mention and sentiments and trying to isolate how customers are reacting to a particular outreach, and how to influence their behavior. Small Business Trends: Jennifer where can people learn more? Jennifer Roberts: They can go to Collective Intellect. This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.
From Small Business Trends This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| What Happens to the Supply Chain? Posted: 09 Mar 2012 05:30 AM PST
Before becoming a cartoonist I worked at a company that was getting its ISO-QS-PDQ 9009 certification (or something like that), which for me meant lots of meetings, paperwork, and flowcharts. There were flowcharts for who did what, what went where, who was who and so forth. It got confusing, especially when we realized that one flowchart had essentially become a Möbius strip. But it’s been a while since I really got into a flowchart, so I had to go back and do a little research for this cartoon to make it work more or less. It’s probably not strictly necessary for the joke, but it was a nice trip down memory lane. From Small Business Trends |
| Spreading Your Brand Like a Zombie Apocalypse Posted: 09 Mar 2012 02:30 AM PST What do zombies have to do with your small business? A trend that has exploded on the Web and beyond can inspire lessons for our own marketing success. Here are some key marketing resources to remember. Trends & InnovationsMarketing lessons from the living dead. So why should entrepreneurs seeking to spread their brand be obsessed with zombies, you ask? Perhaps because the viral success of zombie apocalypse is so pervasive. What can it teach us? Entrepreneur Affiliate marketing trends. Small Business Trends has been featuring live blogging from Affiliate Management Days. Here is the fourth edition for you to enjoy. Small Business Trends Next FrontierMarketing uses for Pinterest. Are you pinterested in learning to use the Web’s most powerful new marketing tool to effectively position your small business. Here’s more on the topic. Understanding Marketing Going for the youth market. One sure way to grow your customer base is to attract a younger market. If you’re not sure how to get started or even whether this approach will work for your brand, take a look. Fast Company Marketing RevolutionQR codes and the retail shopper. The power of QR codes in the offline retail world is already well-known. If your small business hasn’t already harnessed it, here are some ideas to do better. Pitney Bowes Two words that will change your brand. Remembering to say these words to loyal and valued customers will definitely make a difference and could just be the deciding factor of whether you succeed or fail. Firefly Coaching Online MarketingGetting found online. It doesn’t get any more critical than this. If your customers can’t find you, they won’t hear your message and they certainly won’t buy from you. Keeping Up With The Web Staying ahead of the curve. Is social media always a good marketing idea? It depends if you’re ahead of or behind the curve. Here’s a piece of marketing strategy that runs counter to trends. Small Business Marketing Strategies From Small Business Trends |
Below is a live blogging recap of the afternoon keynote “The Science of Influence & Persuasion: Getting What You Want, When You Want It” featuring speaker John Greathouse (pictured left) a partner at Rincon Venture Partners, a venture capital firm investing in early stage web-based businesses.
Below is a live blogging recap of the session "Marketing for Mobile Apps" featuring coverage from the session with speaker Peter Hamilton (pictured left), CMO of 
This is a live blogging of the morning keynote "Newest Adware & Affiliate Marketing Abuses.” Below is coverage from the session featuring speaker Ben Edelman (pictured left), Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School.
Small Business Trends: Before we jump into things, can you give us a little bit of your personal background?
Whether you’re growing your business or starting a new venture, BlackBerry solutions provide you with the freedom you want and the control you need. [Series sponsor]
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