Mobile Ads Drive High Response Rates and Brand Boosts
May 13, 2010
The US mobile advertising market is expected to reach $593 billion this year according to eMarketer, and that growth is attributed to research which demonstrates high response rates and positive branding from mobile ads. In fact, research from InsightExpress reports that mobile ads are “significantly more effective than online ads across several branding metrics … exposure to mobile ads provided two and a half times the lift of online ads for ad awareness and six times the lift in purchase intent.” Now, those are statistics that are hard to ignore.
Take a look at the chart from eMarketer below which shows specifically how mobile vs. online advertising affected respondents’ impression of brands.
In terms of click-through rates, the most avid mobile device users (typically smartphone owners) were most likely to click on mobile banner ads but found full-page ads intrusive and clicked on them far less often. Also interesting was the finding that claimed less avid mobile users noticed sponsored apps more often and clicked on them more often than avid mobile users.
As I wrote about last month, Fortune 500 corporate executives are less enthusiastic about mobile advertising, but it would appear based on these statistics that they might want to re-evaluate. Clearly, mobile ads are getting noticed and having a positive effect, not to mention getting the click-throughs that executives value so highly.
The trick now is figuring out which types of mobile advertising generate the most positive responses from specific target audiences. The InsightExpress research found a variance between how different ads perform, from mobile video ads to mobile Internet ads and more, in terms of purchase intent, awareness, and brand favorability. For example, mobile Internet ads saw the biggest increase in ad awareness and purchase intent but mobile video ads saw the biggest increase in brand favorability.
Mobile advertising is still in its infancy and no path for success has been defined yet. We’re still very much in the experimentation and learning phase, but if your brand isn’t there experimenting and learning, you’re missing out on a big opportunity that your competitor just might cash in on before you can get budget approval. In other words, the time to add a mobile component to your marketing plan is now.
Your thoughts?
Preboarding! (AKA, Recruitment)
May 12, 2010
My inbox has been stuffed lately with articles, invitations, etc., related to “onboarding.” I’m guessing that reflects an expected uptick in hiring, plus the notion that better onboarding creates more productive (and therefore more cost-effective) employees. Get an overview of the onboarding value proposition in this HR Management article, which summarizes some findings from a recent Aberdeen Research report.
But whatever the reason for interest around this topic, it’s worth a revisit from the recruiting perspective.
Most discussions acknowledge that onboarding actually begins during—not after—the hiring phase. For example, Mary Lorentz’s very good post Un-Boarding: 5 Ways Companies Get Employee Onboarding Wrong notes that onboarding should begin during the interview. In a helpful post on Creating an Onboarding Plan, HR Bartender Sharlyn Lauby observes: “onboarding to me is really about the pre- and post- hire process that helps an employee become acclimated to their new working environment.”
And yet! There’s not much said in either case—or anywhere else–of what this truism might mean in practice. So I’ll go out on a limb and propose this basic standard for successful preboarding:
Don’t make the future employee hate the company before they get hired.
Onboarding is all about engaging the new employee, and that process is much easier if the employee is already disposed to like their new job. The more unpleasantness they have experienced on the way to getting hired, the less optimistic they will be about the company. Although some new-hires had a choice (i.e., they were persuaded to accept this position instead of one or more others) many or most would have taken almost any job offered—so they may be more relieved to be employed than excited about the new opportunity.
Here are three (hopefully obvious) rules for not alienating prospects online:
- Make the application process efficient and pleasant!
- Keep in touch—acknowledge applications, respond to email, and update applicants on their status.
- Provide plenty of relevant information on the website—and of course, make it easy to navigate.
And a couple of rules for not alienating prospects in person:
- Be sure the interviewer is prepared—and that absolutely does include reading the candidate’s resume beforehand.
- Listen! Whether the interview process is structured or unstructured, leave room to draw the candidate out with real conversation, not PR fluff or obligatory chat.
Bonus thought: Feature some new-hires on the Careers site, talking about their experiences with the whole process: finding/researching the company, applying, interviewing, and getting that magical offer.
(Thanks for the original boarding snapshot, Matti Blume.)
BP – Flooded in Oil Rather than ‘Beyond Petroleum’
May 11, 2010
For years, BP has used the “Beyond Petroleum” tagline to massage the perception of the BP brand as being one that stands for so much more than oil. While the company has been accused of greenwashing by using that tagline, given that almost all of its revenue comes from oil-related activities, the tagline did succeed in differentiating the brand from the Exxon’s of the world. Remember, marketing and branding is all about perceptions. Right?
But what happens when events prove those perceptions were fabricated?
BP never claimed it wasn’t in the oil business with the Beyond Petroleum tagline, but the company did attempt to position its brand as the antithesis of big oil companies that care only about profits regardless of the negative effects their products and businesses have on the environment.
Until April 2010, BP managed to protect its brand positioning as the oil company that puts the environment first, despite previous problems. But can BP retain that positioning now that the company caused one of the biggest oil spills in history off the coast of Louisiana?
Probably not. However, there is more to this story than brand positioning. Do consumers truly care where their gasoline, etc. comes from? Will they drive out of their way to find a non-BP gas station?
Certainly, consumers care, but the truth of the matter is that there is little difference in consumers’ minds about oil company brand positioning. All of those companies are grouped together, for the most part, in consumers’ minds.
Therefore, BP will undoubtedly survive, but it’s highly likely (and suggested) that BP go through a rebranding. Beyond Petroleum won’t get the job done anymore. The more interesting question from a branding perspective is whether or not there is a brand message and position that truly could differentiate an oil company from its competitors — something that would make consumers pay more than the excessive prices they already pay and make them want to drive out of their way to find a gas station that offers fuel from a specific company.
What do you think? Can it be done? Leave a comment and let’s discuss!
Image: Flickr
Farewell to Flash? (And Why That Matters)
May 10, 2010
Among the Earth-shaking events of April 2010 was Apple’s announcement that iProducts will never, ever have support for Flash.
So?
It may not be important to follow the back-and-forth technical arguments about Flash, but anyone who has anything to do with corporate communications online should acquire at least a high-level overview of this development. And since employer branding in general, and the Careers site in particular, have a strong interest in social networking and multimedia, there are very good reasons to be in the picture on this topic.
Oh?
Skip the details, and the issue is mainly mobility. For good or otherwise—folks today want to see/find/do everything on their phones (and other mobile devices) that they can see/find/do at their desks. In fact they want to do more, since they will be operating in physical space, in real time, rather than just looking at a static monitor. Plus: They want it all to be seamlessly familiar, easily accessible, battery-friendly, and plenty quick.
Leveraging the mobility agenda is increasingly important for effective recruiting. So companies need to be aware of shifts in technology and ahead of the adoption/implementation curve. If IT is trying to talk to you about HTML5, listen. If they are not talking about it, worry.
For a fairly friendly introduction to the issues at play, follow these steps:
- Read Steve Jobs’s clearly written and well reasoned explanation of Apple’s position.
- Read Mashable’s follow-up post, Apple Didn’t Kill Flash, HTML5 Did.
- Read another point of view from Flash developer Richard Leggett
- Zoom out and review the big picture with Wired’s analysis of the Top 7 Disruptions of 2009.
Finally, make sure tech evolution is getting serious consideration at your company. Will those high-value passive candidates be able to view CEO greetings, employee testimonials, and other cool Careers content on their iPads??
Inside the Unemployment Experience
May 7, 2010
I have a friend who has been unemployed for a while now. And I confess—I have not been altogether sympathetic to her situation. For one thing, I’ve been self-employed just about all my life, so the idea of getting unemployment benefits seems like a luxury to me, especially as my friend doesn’t have any dependents, and does have a comfortable financial cushion.
For another thing, my friend hated her job, so it seems as if this is in some ways a fortunate opportunity. Plus . . . she was one of the last people laid off after successive down-sizing moves in a large, troubled company—so arguably, there’s not much to be ego-wounded about, and it wasn’t any sort of surprise.
And yet, my friend has been in a deep and deepening depression since the day she got her official notice. I honestly did not understand this until I heard a recent interview with Dominique Browning on CNN’s Reliable Sources. Browning, who had been editor-in-chief of House and Garden for twelve years, began a steep emotional descent when the magazine was suddenly shut down. In the interview, she describes herself as a “zombie” and the experience as a “nightmare.” The fact that Browning was a very successful professional, living far from the edge of economic hardship, made little difference in terms of the way unemployment turned her life upside down.
Browning walks us through the experience in Slow Love, a new memoir that Publishers Weekly calls “enchanting, funny, [and] deeply gracious.” For a while, Browning can’t stop baking muffins (she gains fifteen pounds), and as she navigates sleepless nights and panicky days, she confronts her own life in a deep and difficult way. Read a generous excerpt in the New York Times—and don’t miss the comments, which come from both ends of the sympathy spectrum.
Needless to say, Browning’s story has a happy ending: She rediscovers herself, moves to a small town, and becomes a blogger. (Really.) Also needless to say, many if not most folks don’t have the luxury of reinventing themselves quite so completely. But Browning’s story has a lot to share, no matter whether you are coping with vocation disruption yourself, or trying to understand someone else’s challenge.
Especially valuable: We are reminded by Slow Love of the ways we use work to structure our days, define our identities, and (often) distract ourselves from personal problems. It happens that Browning loved her job—but many people, like my friend, find they miss jobs they didn’t like a bit. So (here’s the relevant bit) it’s worth remembering that when the unemployed go out into the world as job-seekers, they are not looking just for a replacement paycheck. They are also looking for a place to to reconstruct a vital aspect of their life that has gone missing.
No surprise, Browning’s blog is beautiful. She also writes a thoughtful column called Personal Nature for the Environmental Defense Fund. Both are worth checking out.
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