Brands are all about engagement!

"Gone are the days of repetitive, one-way communications urging your target market to buy your product or service. This means your trusted print campaign may not be getting the best ROI. Today's brand strategies have to include methods to engage with your consumers by capturing their hearts, minds and conversations throughout the purchase and relationship cycle, while remaining brand-centric™ at every touch point."
Read the full note on the non-traditional ways of engaging with customers by Desiree Gullan.

Social Media Measurement, ROI and Monitoring

Had been on the look-out for some good content on the subject for a long time. I am still trying to understand the model where-in I can justify Twittering in terms of impact. Then I came across Robin's post wherein he has pulled together a collection of valuable resources, tools, & advice specifically on the topics of social media measurement, monitoring and ROI.

This along with the other digital marketing tools listed in my earlier post/s called My A to Z list of Digital Tools make a far more comprehensive toolkit. Access my A to Z list here.

I am sure you’ll find his compilation useful and some of the social media statistics resources will find their way into your toolkits. Access the list here.

Eye tracking study reveals website tactics.

Eye tracking studies tend to be very informative and reveal valuable information about how people read and interact with websites. Eyetrack III recently published their eye tracking results for news sites. Some of the findings were quite the on lines of what we have commonly believed, however there are some interesting findings too.

Have listed 12 of the findings I thought were most interesting.

1.Headlines draw eyes before pictures.

2. People scan the first couple words of a headline.

3. People scan the left side of a list of headlines.

4. Your headline must grab attention in less than 1 second.

5. Smaller type promotes closer reading.

6. Navigation at the top of the page works best.

7. Short paragraphs encourage reading.

8. Introductory paragraphs enjoy high readership.

9. Ad placement in the top and left positions works best.

10. People notice ads placed close to popular content.

11. People read text ads more than graphic ads.

12. Multimedia works better than text for unfamiliar or conceptual information.

Read the full report here.

New approach allows advertisers to map and assign value to various touch points, gaining a more complete picture of a campaign.

Microsoft engagement mapping is similar to the "last mile touch point mapping" which is being undertaken by my agency for the last 6 months or so. http://www.pulsesuite.com/ The difference being that while the MS's Engagement Mapping is a new approach to managing and measuring the effectiveness of online campaigns - our approach has been to map the touch points at the last mile which impact the actual path to purchase. Read more about Microsoft's Engagement Mapping here.

This type of engagement mapping tool will become really powerful when it can measure not only ad views that lead to a purchase, but also any other type of online or social interaction. This is probably the end game that Facebook is aiming at with Beacon. Imagine the value advertisers could derive from a tool that looks at how your online activity leads up to a purchase. I.e., did you see a friend talk about the product on a Facebook wall post? Did you read a blogged review? Did you see the product talked about in a YouTube video? Did you look at any ads when all that was happening?

Our approach on our last mile tools has been similar where-in we and understand reasons why a shopper changes his brand in the last mile - which are the touch - points that help in the brand choice. This information is a must have when planning a last mile / retail engagement. Know more about these last mile tools at www.pulsesuite.com

How Digital Marketing Can Help Reinvent Direct Marketing - From Adage

Found this to be really relevant and hence requesting all to read thru. "traditional direct is stuck in the limits of a one-to-one model created and perfected for a previous age" - how true!! Read the article here.