AZIMA Presentation on Mobile First for 2013: Advertise, Monetize, and Maximize 2-28-13

Posted on March 6, 2013 by - Local News

AZIMA Presentation on Mobile First for 2013: Advertise, Monetize, and Maximize 2-28-13 by Matthew O’Brien

Kim Carlson, Strategic Sales for http://www.InMobi.com, a global mobile ad network. This slide deck from the February 28th AZIMA event provides some industry insights and commentary on the state of mobile advertising. Including InMobi’s recent Mobile Consumption research, learn why use mobile in your strategy, how is mobile different, mobile marketing insights on a couple of key verticals, best practices for successful mobile marketing and finally some creative examples of recent award winning campaigns. Kim has worked in digital media for the last 10+ years addressing many aspects of mobile marketing. In Mobile, most people believe this is an opportunity to find the holy grail of marketing- touching the consumer across the marketing funnel from awareness to purchase, to loyalty. Every year that we take a look at this we seem to make progress- and that’s exciting for marketers, users, and enablers alike.

Next AZIMA event is on March 28th will feature digital marketing pioneer, Jay Baer, as host and MC and he promises to share some of his top ideas on the digital marketing world as we know it. This is the first Annual TIM Awards is your chance to mingle with some of the best and brightest marketers in Phoenix. If you are in digital marketing field, this is an event you don’t want to miss!

1st Annual AZIMA TIM Awards: Call for entries.

Posted on February 5, 2013 by - Local News

AZIMA 1st Annual Tim Awards
You can be the toast of your digital domain if you win one of the coveted TIMs—the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association’s award for excellence. Named after Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, acknowledged father of the World Wide Web, the TIMs showcase Arizona talent and work in the interactive realm for calendar year 2012.

Interactive luminary Jay Baer, author of The Now Revolution, will offer a keynote and MC the awards ceremony.

Categories:Enter in any of our 12 categories—a first place and runner up will be awarded in each. This competition is open to any Arizona-based agency or firm doing work on behalf of local, national or international companies. Please note that qualifying work must have been produced in the calendar year 2012; speculative work or personal projects are not eligible.

  • Best Website
  • Best Social Media Campaign
  • Best Integrated Interactive Campaign
  • Best Email Marketing Campaign
  • Best Display Ad (Single or Campaign)
  • Best Rich Media Execution
  • Best Mobile Marketing Campaign
  • Best App
  • Best Blog
  • Best Online Video
  • Brand of the Year
  • Interactive Person of the Year

Mark your calendars. The deadline for entries is March 7TH, 2013, with the awards presented during a ceremony on March 28TH.

Entry Fee
Each entry costs $50; you can enter one campaign multiple times (for example, you can enter your brilliant blog as part of the “Best Social Media Campaign” and under “Best Blog.” Please note that each entry requires a separate $50 fee.

Register Now! (Deadline is March 7)

Presentation by Rami Kalla on Converting Video to Sales on YouTube

Posted on January 24, 2013 by - Local News

Guest post by: Shauna Stacy, Hummingbird Media, LLC

The latest AZIMA meeting featured a presentation titled “Lights, Camera, YouTube: Converting Video to Sales.”  Presenter Rami Kalla, the owner of Tempe-based Point in Time Studios, offered an overview of the opportunities of using online video, shared a number of success stories from businesses who have chosen to capitalize on them, and spoke on the basics of the popular site YouTube.

To start, Rami shared a number of statistics regarding online video. One of the most impressive: Customers are 64 to 85% more likely to purchase a product or service after watching a video. Previous speaker, Jon Wolske of Zappos, indicated the same affect in March 2012 when he discussed the positive impact of adding videos of products on Zappos.com.

Video also appears in 70% of top online search returns. This means that creating video content for your product or service, and making it easy for prospects to find, could dramatically boost your online visibility and conversion if done well. Rami continued with a brief history of online video, emphasizing top video site YouTube. In addition to being the top video site, with 800 million unique monthly visitors, YouTube is a critical piece of the Google suite, and – ultimately – a big piece of the SEO puzzle.

Those planning to jump into online video were urged to do the following:

  • Focus less on the elusive viral video and more on your audience. Where are they searching? What do they want to know?
  • Focus on quality over quantity.
  • Realize that quality does not always mean exorbitant cost, and vice versa.
  • Start small and build from there.

The presentation also included a demonstration of the Will It Blend? and Swagger Wagon videos. They make for fun research, if you have a few minutes to spare. Finally, he dove more deeply into YouTube specifics, including earned versus paid media, keyword and SEO basics, Adwords for Video, and conversion analytics. Like other forms of online content, there is no magic, single step to creating success in online video. Once you build a baseline, and take the first step, you can continuously improve with evaluation and persistence. You just have to take the first step.

Next AZIMA with Tim Moore Sneak Peek

Posted on August 6, 2012 by - AZIMA News, Events

Last Friday afternoon, Tim Moore of CrushIQ sat down with the past president of the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association, Arnie Kuenn to discuss some of the topics he’ll be covering at the upcoming AZIMA event. Tim has been engaging in technology consulting for nearly 20 years, and provides counsel, marketing guidance, and digital relationship best practices. He has a wide field of rich experience from working at The New York Times Company in digital business solutions leadership role, to the founder of numerous technology start ups. He’ll be braving Arizona’s summer heat, making the trip all the way Willmington, North Carolina, on Thursday August 16th, 2012 to present at the “Google Plus for Business” Scottsdale Hilton. Watch the video interview to get a sneak peek at what Tim plans to present at the next AZIMA.

Tickets are available to see “Google Plus for Business with CrushIQ CEO Tim Moore”. Register now!

Catapult Your Business’s Google Rankings With Inbound and Content Marketing

Posted on July 25, 2012 by - Local News

Guest Post By: Dave Murrow, Content Marketer, Mint Social

Last week, AZIMA members learned about ways to rapidly grow their companies’ blog and brand presence from speaker Marcus Sheridan aka @TheSalesLion in his presentation “7 Ways to Explode Your Company’s Brand through Content Marketing.”

From the start, Sheridan was a ball of energy, moving about the room with effortless charm and sass, engaging AZIMA members by name and seeking insights into how they use blogging, content and social media to make a difference in their business.

Sheridan spoke on his experience as a business owner on how to use content marketing and blogging to catapult a business to greater sales heights. One of Sheridan’s main tips that he shared with the AZIMA audience is to create blog posts based on every question a sales person might get from prospects and customers. As an example, he told of how he started blogging as owner of River Pools & Spas, writing about such subjects like the benefits of fiberglass pools over concrete pools, simply because prospects were asking him this in real life.

When his blog posts on these common question topics started to help his pool company soar to the top of Google rankings for these topics, he knew he was onto something. It’s this kind of content that works, Sheridan told AZIMA members.  Be honest, be transparent, compare products and services in your industry, write about your product’s prices, and most importantly, be a teacher and share your knowledge with people. Good content will just come from that.

Knowing the ‘why’ for companies to create social content for the web is the beginning, Sheridan offered. When your company knows ‘why’ content marketing works, then it’s easy to convince your employees to blog on the company’s behalf. Having them share their own individual knowledge for company blogs adds loads of great content to the company mix.

Sheridan notes at his blog that he’s being asked by people he’s never met for his suggestions on which pool brand they should buy, or which contractor they should work with. That’s content marketing success. Because his pool company blog “talks about subjects that no one else talks about”, like comparing pool brands, comparing companies and talking about pool builder’s best and worst practices, the blog gains traction, link sharing and more.  Once your company is on the track with content marketing, it becomes second nature to become the voice of your industry, and that can only lead to greater success.

Download Marcus Sheridan’s free e-book “Inbound and Content Marketing Made Easy” at this link.

A Presentation by Marty Weintraub, Author of Killer Facebook Ads

Posted on June 28, 2012 by - Events

Guest Post: Khayree Billingslea, the Sales & Marketing Intern at local digital marketing agency and founding AZIMA Member, Terralever.

Marty Weintraub, author of “Killer Facebook Ads” and CEO of aimClear online marketing, has a lot to say about how Facebook has a lot to say about you. Weintraub’s insights constitute a departure from conventional application of paid-organic advertising on the social media behemoth—instead of targeting key demographics, constructing personas (or a ) and driving ads to their Facebook pages, use user data from their Facebook interests to set retargeting cookies which drive ads to many other sites.

Industry thinkers who claim to have uncovered a way of thinking about digital media that “revolutionizes” or “redefines” the way the media landscape will be navigated for the next five or so years are dime-a-dozen. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to sort out stale reiterations of old concepts from the truly new strategic developments. In the digital space, a field in which the ground is daily shifting beneath the feet of the media experts who dare to attain some mastery over it, Marty Weintraub has made his expeditions through the wilderness and it just happens that he is an excellent cartographer who keeps his ear to the proverbial railroad tracks.

For Mr. Weintraub, key consumer insights come from utilizing user-provided data. That data can be used to model what he calls “personas”. A persona is an amalgam of interests, often particular to a member of one or another niche market, likely to be published on a social media platform.  It is the advertiser’s responsibility to take advantage of the targeting tools at their disposal. If you master persona modeling—that is, if you come to learn the resonance frequency of high volume targeting terms—Weintruab claims, the precision of your messages will increase drastically. The goal at the end the targeting process is to consistently send out advertisements tuned to the needs of a very small, well-understood, audience. In a sense, his technique turns your online marketing strategy into something akin to a more-or-less benign CIA operation that predator drone strikes offers into the web browsers of consumers.

It is also worth Marty’s unconventional style; never once did a dull moment of technically sophisticated discourse escape vindication via his playfulness and wit. A whirling tornado of activity and apparent ecstasy at having been so lucky as to find a job he truly loves, Weintraub is an absolute joy to watch. If you missed it, take a look at the Marty’s AZIMA presentation shared on aimclear’s Facebook page.

Save 20% on SES San Francisco with AZIMA

Posted on June 24, 2012 by - AZIMA News

Attend SES San Francisco Conference & Expo, the leading interactive marketing event where more than 4,000 marketers and SEO professionals gather each year. Connect and learn on topics such as PPC management, keyword research, search/SEO, social media, local, mobile, link building, big data, video optimization, site optimization, usability, and much more. The event offers 55+ sessions, intensive training workshops, abundant networking opportunities, and an expo floor packed with vendors designed to better help you with your goals. Save 20{2bbd478b6aadf2a9bb5e10dcf35d17c0d0772390afbaf5ac8145fb1096668903} when you register with code AZIMA20.

The Most Social Event in the History of Television

Posted on May 22, 2012 by - Events

You CAN make a huge social media effort work without a huge staff. That’s one of the lessons gained from hearing an inspiring message from Beverly Jackson, Director of Marketing & Social Media for the Grammys, at the May AZIMA event held in Scottsdale.

Jackson provided an insider’s look to 100-plus AZIMA members how The 54th Grammys became “the most social event in the history of television.” Her relatively small, in-house group of social media workers, teamed up with assistance from agency Chiat Day and a social analytics firm, helped bring The 54th Grammys to a massive audience across multiple online platforms.

Jackson outlined a concept of ‘transmedia’ and hashtag usage that helped her team plot out a strategy to hit all forms of online content. Instead of letting the Twitterverse dictate which hashtags to use, Jackson and her team decided early on to manage the hashtag terms and help bring the flow of messaging to those terms.

Jackson’s team used an innovative social media approach to announce to media about which hashtags to use for all the events surrounding the 54th Grammys. One slide she shared (see below) noted a different hashtags for the 6 Twitter accounts and 14 Facebook pages her team set up for different Grammy activities and the audiences around those specific events.

Some of the highlights noted during Jackson’s presentation included:

–       A record high number of 160,341 tweets per min were recorded during the live Grammys telecast

–       13 million social comments is the new record for TV (most social)

–       Use of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Turntable.FM, YouTube and many other social media channels to drive awareness, audience reach and hits back to the

Grammys website.

Ms. Jackson brought a wealth of experience to the presentation stage. In addition to her current role as Director of Marketing, Strategic Alliances and Social Media for The Recording Academy and the GRAMMY Awards, she has previously worked in digital and business development roles at Octagon/IPG in the Music and Entertainment group and WPP’s JWT.  Beverly also served as the VP of Product Development during the start of phase of BlackVoices, now a part of the Huffington Post.

Ms. Jackson clearly struck a chord with the AZIMA members, who raved online about her presentation, and discussed on Twitter how to translate her massive event expertise in social media to individual campaigns in the AZ and SW US region.

Guest Post By: Dave Murrow is a Valley-based digital pro working in SEO, PR/Content and Digital Marketing. Read his blog posts atDaveMurrow.com and at Mint Social.

Wrap-up of Jon Wolske of Zappos Insights Event

Posted on March 20, 2012 by - Events

Guest Post By: Shauna Stacy

This month’s presentation focused on the relationship between marketing and culture and was led by Jon Wolske of Zappos Insights. Zappos Insights, an arm of Zappos, is dedicated to educating other businesses about the importance and impact of company culture.

The presentation included an overview of Zappos’ impressive growth and company values. Early in the presentation, Jon asked a critical question: “Do you have culture at your workplace?” Some, but not all, hands raised in the crowd. “The answer is yes,” he continued, asserting that culture is present in every organization, whether it is formalized or not.

Zappos culture guide Jon Wolske and fellow Zappos employees welcome a tour group with a choreographed weight-lifting routine featured on LasVegasSun.com

Zappos believes a company-wide focus on delivering great service is critical to its own success and that this focus relies on a strong, positive company culture. The result of this focus is evidenced in customer stories, employee advocates, and positive press.

Jon reviewed Zappos’10 core values. Customer experience is a key part of the Zappos marketing strategy, and they believe it starts at the website where their phone number prominently displayed. This leads back to value number 1, “Deliver WOW service,” and hinges on developing a “PEC” or a “Personal Emotional Connection.”

PEC-building also includes, but is not limited to, delivering bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes to customers. For Leap Year, it meant giving all customers who made purchases on Leap Year Day a four-year refund policy, instead of the usual duration. It also means going to the competitor on the customer’s behalf when Zappos can’t deliver, which can lead to powerful word-of-mouth marketing.

Culture is most evident in the Zappos’ call center. Unlike most modern call centers, front lines call takers have no script and no requirement to sell. The call center is not considered a cost center. Because of a shared sense of ownership and pride among employees, “there is no need to micromanage.” Employees are their strongest advocates and if you asked an employee what the company values are, he or she would not need to check the employee manual. “We just know what they are,” Jon said.

Their emphasis on culture has spurred more than just positive press and catchy theme songs and viral videos but ongoing success and growth. Zappos’ revenue reflects steady growth and, according to their reports, 75{2bbd478b6aadf2a9bb5e10dcf35d17c0d0772390afbaf5ac8145fb1096668903} of the average daily shoppers are returning customers and 45{2bbd478b6aadf2a9bb5e10dcf35d17c0d0772390afbaf5ac8145fb1096668903} were told about Zappos by friend.

Engaging online content, as well as interaction on social media sites and all other business operations, is designed to tie back to their commitment to the Four Cs: Culture, Customer Service, Clothing and Community. Zappos wants to be known for community. This includes their online community at zapposinsights.com. They are in the process of building a new home office in downtown Las Vegas to become a true part of their community. They are also working to grow education in Nevada, which is currently ranked worst in the country for education.

The presentation was followed with a Q&A session. Highlights are below:

What other social media sites does Zappos used, besides the big sites (Facebook, Twitter, et al)?

Zappos has “product managers” who are front lines to test out interaction on different social media sites. This includes the newest social media darling, Pinterest. There is also an application dev team which has previously launched their Couture Catalogue and Mappos, a visual map of what people are buying at any given moment.

Have you gotten feedback from the companies who tour the Zappos offices with the intent to change their own company culture?

Jon shared a story of one businessperson who had a one-hour tour which resulted in dramatic changes at his own company. “We’re not trying to get people to do what we do,” Jon explained. “A lot of it has to do with relaxing things a bit. We aren’t marketing Insights but we will be looking through our histories at some point soon.”

At a certain point during initial, required call center training, trainees are offered $3,000 to quit. What happens if someone gets through the $3,000 offer and is still not a good fit?

“Just like a performance issue, we coach,” said Jon. “If we can’t coach up, we coach out.”

What does Zappos use to monitor brand mentions on social sites?

“We run lean.” The team relies heavily on Google news and the Twitter conversation page. They monitor on a big picture scale.

Your value is “Do more with less,” and you say that you “run lean,” but great ideas cost money. How do you find balance?

If it’s free, they try it. If it costs money, employees are required to do a standard proposal process. “They’ve been good at taking risk and letting ideas fail.”

What provides a higher margin, the culture book or shoes?

“Well, the culture book is free, so the shoes.”

What is your philosophy on legal concerns?

The Zappos lawyers are also hired as a culture fit. Employees are expected to rely on common sense when making decisions; the onus is on the employee. “When you trust people to be adults, they will be. It works for us.”

He then added, “You can’t do the tour on roller blades, though.”

Many thanks to Jon for an excellent presentation! Be sure to check out the next AZIMA event “The Interactive Future of Hospitality & Tourism” on April 19th at 6:00 PM at the Scottsdale Hilton.

Joel Book Peels Pack the Pages of Effective Cross-Channel CRM at AZIMA Event

Posted on February 23, 2012 by - Events

Guest Post by: Liam O’Mahoney

With all of the mobile, social and email activities consuming the marketing efforts of organizations in the B2B and B2C spaces, Joel Book of ExactTarget brought all of the planning, executing and evaluating together in weaving a concise web of how to manage cross-channel marketing and cultivate a more fulfilling customer life cycle of engagement.

Before a turnout of 100 attendees at the Feb, 16 AZIMA event, Book dove into research, reflections and the results of two case studies to portray how a proper CRM methodology should work. Essentially, given the “33 Flavors” of available channels (remember that Springsteen song “57 Channels and There’s Nothin’ On?), the key to attracting, engaging and serving customers is constantly delivering personal, relevant and timelyinformation while also respecting their boundaries. He cited the campaigns of Pei Wei and Volvo Construction Equipment for their successful database development, targeted customer engagement and very high redemption percentages.

For you academics out there, the thematic six-step disciplinary progression chart for a robust Cross-Channel CRM campaign consists of the following:

Acquire -> Engage -> Convert -> Serve -> Grow -> Retain (Brand Ambassador status!)

Book pointed to a major disconnect that often exists between the web content management department and the business development / customer engagement teams. Lead generation suffers dramatically when the call to action isn’t immediately visible or definable on the home page for the sake of being aligned with the needed data to initiate the customer relationship and nurture the engagement life cycle. The “Lead Management Workflow” relies on two factors – the speed of the response to an initial customer request (should arrive within 24 hours of receiving contact information) and delivering quality and qualified information into the hands of local dealers, agents or representatives.

He emphasized the importance of organizations having the courage to experiment with their data, the digital media tools and their methods of acquisition and measurement to develop the right formula that will work for their particular customer service objectives. He closed with the thought that social media is not the End Game, but is rather a step in the Cross-Channel CRM cycle of capturing emails and consistently following through on personalizing customer needs and interests. He summed up his presentation with the mantra that “Serving is the New Selling” on the quest to nurture a successful customer life cycle with data integration and marketing automation.

Joel Book’s Overarching Principles for Effective CCM & CRM

  1. Develop a customer engagement strategy – have a campaign management process.
  2. Maintain customer data integration and centralization –  ensure engagement at every stage of the life cycle.
  3. Marketing automation – have web and sales/service teams aligned to sustain the life cycle.

Key Takeaway Notes:

  1. In 1990, one television spot on the three major networks could disseminate its message to reach 80 percent of households across the United States. Today, it would take 20 messaging channels to attain that same figure. (Read: massive media fragmentation!)
  2. The ROI ratio of cross-channel marketing is $41 of revenue for every $1 invested.
  3. Organizations should regularly harvest referrals, opinions, evaluations, word of mouth (earned social media) to augment the lead management workflow and assist product distributors and sales representatives in the field.
  4. It is essential to have comprehensive CRM software for data cleansing and lead scoring to support the lead management workflow.
  5. According to a Forrester study, 30 percent of customers will start their purchase decision-making at an organization’s home page and 27 percent at a brand page.
  6. 58 percent of customers begin purchase process with search and 46 percent combine social media and search.
  7. The most effective CRM software should analyze customer activity points and frequency to calculate a rank profile and likelihood to buy.
  8. By 2015, 71 percent of sales leads are expected to originate through a corporate website.
  9. There is no such thing as a singe-channel consumer!
  10. CRM programs should embrace the Zappos model that service is the anchor of selling.

This post is a reprint of an original post shared by AZIMA member Liam O’Mahoney. Read the original post on Customer Relationship Management on Liam’s blog.