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First impressions are everything. When thinking about the elements needed to make a great advertising campaign, many start off with contemplating messaging, visuals and platforms for distribution. But the Vice President of Research and Analysis of Media (RAM) Staffan Hulten takes a different approach. He recognizes if you don’t catch the attention of the audience within seconds, the campaign is in jeopardy of failure. This makes understanding each member of the client’s audience from an independent level essential for campaign success.

We’re excited to highlight Staffan as our expert speaker for the October monthly AZIMA event and pick his brain about what it really takes to forecast the success of any ad campaign.

Using big data to create meaningful and memorable campaigns for audiences is key according to Hulten. As a founding partner of RAM, he works closely with traditional and digital media clients to develop robust research panels that truthfully mirror their client’s viewers, readers and listeners. This helps to dig down into the roots of the media medium and determine the most effective ways to reach their key audiences with their campaigns.

According to Hulten, with over 75 million interviews locked in and an additional ½ million interviews being added to their database every month, RAM is the Ikea for media data. This data gives RAM the ability to identify industry fallacies to provide valuable consultancy and education so their clients can focus on what matters most: generating results.

“A code that is placed on print and mobile ads can be monitored to measure different individual aspects of a user,” said Hulten. “Not many people want to know that they are being shadowed, but we can see exactly what they do and how frequently they do it.” That information is helping analysts and big brands learn.

Hulten notes that not everything users do online is being watched. Select things are examined to better understand consumer habits. Another big change in the industry is the ability to evaluate device preference. RAM evaluates their panel members by listing out the devices they use, which allows them to ensure a more accurate representation of preference and frequency of usage for devices and browsers.

Hulten stresses how important it is to get information from the individual level rather than the browser level. Tracing something like “reach” which is measured differently for every channel is not as accurate as measuring memory traces. Asking panel members and people if they remember a campaign and gathering data on that is much more relevant.

“If I let go of 1 million balloons outside of my hotel, I would have a reach of 1 million,” said Hulten. “But if no one sees it or resonates with it, it won’t have any impact. There are often huge campaigns with no impact at all.”

Staffan grew up in Sweden, moved to East Africa for several years then moved back to Sweden, where he attended University and currently lives. He and his partner founded RAM after noticing a big hole in the media evaluation market. What surprised them most was even though they were focused on print, any other form of media was simpler to provide feedback on. So they set out to make a system that made monitoring more lateral.

When he is not advancing campaigns with tactical data, you can find Hulten enjoying guitar music festivals and practicing his juggling skills for laughs. He advises colleagues and individuals entering this field to be open and very quick to understand and adapt to what really counts. Traditional measurement evaluation is still important, but analysts should be aware that they should monitor the things that result in impact or change

If you are interested in learning more about the world of marketing, be sure to attend our monthly events by signing up as an AZIMA member here: http://joinazima.org/join-azima/

Although not quite as contentious a rivalry as Android vs. iOS or as entertaining as Bear vs. Shark, there are many heated battles taking place in marketing forums and conference rooms all over the country regarding the statistics, user privacy and budgets for this latest rivalry: Search Engine Marketing vs. Targeted Display.

Since they often compete for marketing dollars and are both victims of subjective statistics that favor one or the other depending on the mindset of the analyst, SEM and targeted display efforts are commonly bantered as marketers continuously try and refine their campaigns for the golden goal of higher conversions.

Last Thursday, November 20, the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association (AZIMA) hosted the witty and sharp David McBee, director of training at Simpli.fi, who presented his experiences, anecdotes and thoughts on the SEM vs. Targeted Display rivalry.

David started his presentation with statistical, sidebyside comparisons that highlighted these marketing tasks as separate, standalone campaigns. These comparisons solidified the notion of SEM and Targeted Display being competitors, but David’s presentation of a rivalry quickly rebranded itself as the stories and metrics illustrated that the two worked better in tandem.

Most of us have been involved in the bashing of display ads because CTRs are practically nonexistent as hardly anyone clicks on them. “Only 8 percent of internet users account for 85% of display ad clicks,” David pointed out. Most of those clicks are not from the targeted audience, but rather the very young and old. The 2065 age group simply doesn’t click on ads. Display ad CTRs average a dismal 0.08%. Furthermore, according to GoldSpot Media, 50% of those clicks are accidental.

On the other hand, SEM, specifically PPC, often have CTRs averaging 4%.

There are a few reasons for this difference. First, a display ad is a passive visual thrown out to a wide audience. Even though display has some great targeting abilities, for the most part it relies much more on volume visibility than PPC. The web surfer is usually doing something completely different than what the topic of the display ad represents. PPC ads are the result of a specific search and the likelihood of that ad engaging the user is obviously much higher. “SEM is actionbased. Display is visual,” David said.

Although it’s easy to see the differences and it’s mostly common knowledge that these two have different goals, it’s not common enough to combine the efforts. For truly better PPC, it’s critical to consider incorporating display. “Display impacts search. A good targeted display blends tactics and a display can increase brand searches by 38%,” David said. Since the best kind of search is a brand search, blending these tactics significantly improves the campaign.

On the surface, poor display ad metrics seems to be enough to deter the allocation of marketing dollars. However, David pointed out that the metrics are not representative of their effectiveness: “Compared to SEM, CTR can be a deceptive measure.”

According to ComScore, the average person only does 4 searches per day, spending about 10 seconds per search. “How much opportunity do you have when a person only spends 10 seconds?” David asked. This represents a limited window of opportunity and is clearly a better medium for a calltoaction campaign. Now consider that the average person spends 4 hours online. This chunk of time offers more opportunity for branding via display ads.

This greater awareness opportunity of display ads increases the effectiveness of PPC campaigns. Although David and Simpli.fi represent team Display, he offers a compelling marriage of the two as a tandem effort that seems to appeal to team SEM.

Mindy Weinstein, SEO Manager at Bruce Clay, Inc. offered her thoughts on the event and the rivalry. “I am very focused on the SEO side of digital marketing, so I learned quite a bit of new information from David about targeted display. What stood out the most to me about David’s presentation is that doing targeted display doesn’t have to be in lieu of search engine marketing. You can and should still do SEO and PPC. Targeted display should be an addition—that’s how you maximize your results.”

While the Android vs iOS fans will never find peace and the Bear vs. Shark battles will forever live on, David’s concept of SEM and Targeted Display as “better together” clearly makes the most sense.

View entire presentation

Bet you didn’t know that Ron Burgundy is sending you emails about AZIMA’s programs and other events. Well, not the real Ron Burgundy, but close enough. Adam Arkfeld, president and founder of Tempe-based ParaCore is the talented web developer behind AZIMA’s email campaigns. He also doesn’t take himself too seriously, as evidenced in his “About Us” section on his firm’s website, where he and his “eclectic nerd herd” team have photos of their alter egos displayed. But while Adam chose Ron Burgundy for his alter ego, he takes his work very seriously.

“I primarily oversee operations and really enjoy building a business that revolves around systems, consistent experiences and great work,” Adam said. “My entire day is essentially problem solving and learning new things which are my two favorite things to do.”

Founded in 2009, ParaCore works with medium-sized businesses that are looking to use the web to automate processes and convert visitors. Automating processes allows clients to save time and create consistent experiences, while converting those visitors generates the actual revenue. “In addition to ground up development, we primarily do custom web work that helps different systems talk to one another like CRMs, the website, databases, email clients, social media networks and more,” he said. “We also love web based apps and hybrid native apps like PhoneGap!”

An Arizona native, Adam’s passion for technology started at an early age. “The first website I ever worked on was a site called Preserve Your Flowers for my aunt. She owned a floral freeze drying business and I used to sit in the Barnes & Noble coffee shop between classes at ASU updating her site’s HTML. This was in the early 2000’s so the sites were way different back then!” he said.

And while technology has improved, Adam said there’s still a lot of confusion regarding the best way to build and maintain a website. “The biggest misconception we’ve run across lately is that every website should be built on WordPress,” he said. “ParaCore does a fair amount of WordPress development; however, there’s a point when a site stretches beyond WordPress’s natural capabilities and a more custom solution should start being considered. If it’s a large site, oftentimes WordPress simply isn’t organized well for more advanced features like intranets or file sharing portals with API integrations.”

He also said there is a common misconception that creating an email campaign is easy. “Emails are one of the most painstakingly tedious projects a development company can work on,” he said. “It can take the same amount of time to create a visually attractive email that looks great and is responsive than it takes to test a small web project. It’s absolutely insane how challenging they are to look great and consistent across devices.”

AZIMA is very grateful for Adam’s volunteerism and his enthusiasm for our organization. When asked why he joined AZIMA, Adam cited the programs along with the fact that AZIMA provides relevant industry information. “The networking and people I’ve met are really amazing which makes my time spent at the events very valuable. I also appreciate the varied speakers, topics and presentations because I feel like I leave each event with some tangible value.”

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to work for a brand that claims the highest market share in every market it enters? Richard McDonald, the SVP of Global Marketing for Fender, knows. He grew up worshipping Fender, and now he not only works for it, he lives for it.

At the April AZIMA meeting, McDonald informed us that Leo Fender wasn’t a guitar player; he was a brand innovator, committed to his product, and willing to interact with his customers to ensure their passion was also his passion. He drove the business by letting his customers take the wheel, supplying guitars to musicians and crafting new models from their feedback.

McDonald presented us with three lenses of the Fender brand: protect, evolve, and transform.

1. Protect the brand by creating compelling products
2. Evolve the brand to create profitability and operational excellence
3. Transform the brand to engage and grow the customer base.

As a company, Fender demonstrates these lenses by keeping its products relevant, engaging its customers, and daring to dance along the edge of innovation. McDonald urged daily customer interaction to enable the brand to do what it should do: reflect the customer. Staying relevant in such a dynamic landscape is difficult, but if you tell your story well enough, you don’t have to worry about your customers having misinformation.

For example, Fender decided to address negative online chat room buzz in an unorthodox way by inviting the seven loudest influencers to visit Fender’s headquarters. While there, these individuals received a firsthand view of the brand and the people behind it.

This visit demonstrated the value of interacting with customers and the impact of receiving immediate feedback. It wasn’t about who shouted the loudest; it was about having the right voice- that of the customer. If you can’t relate to your customers, you can’t solve their problems. And if you can’t solve their problems, your brand is destined to become a “what not to do” case study for MBA students.

Throughout the presentation, McDonald emphasized strategy. Not a brand strategy, not a digital strategy, but a customer strategy. No matter who your customers are, you have to know them, relate to them, and listen to them.

Technology today makes it both easier and more complicated to interact with customers. It grants instant access to feedback, while increasing the touchpoints along various channels of communication. More channels equal more feedback, which equals greater opportunity to either win customers or lose them. The use of technology shouldn’t be “checking the boxes,” it should be about putting your customers at the center so they can help you transform your brand to stay relevant.

From their first Telecaster® prototype in 1951, to their current position as one of the world’s leading marketers, manufacturers, and distributors of musical instruments, Fender has amplified the musician in all of us. They have consistently proven it takes more than just a big sound to be successful. That’s why Fender continues to hit the sweet notes by staying relevant, engaging their audience, evolving their products, and sharing their passion- one string at a time.