Marketing

The silver lining in the GDPR: An opportunity for permission-based marketing

February 26, 2018 by Susan Getgood

The GDPR (Global Data Privacy Regulation) is a European law intended to restore control of personal data (what we usually refer to as PII, personally identifiable information) to the consumer. Under GDPR, businesses must comply with a set of strict stipulations regarding data collection and usage that require consumer authorization, both for collection and the intended uses. For more background on the law, AdWeek has a nice piece summarizing the regulation from the perspective of advertisers, agencies and tech companies. and the EU has an excellent interactive infographic.

GDPR changes the worldwide advertising playing field. Even though it is a European law, compliance will be expected from any company, anywhere, that might have access to an EU citizen’s private data. On the technical side, which I am not going to cover here, the data management platforms and ad tech companies that support advertisers, publishers and the programmatic media infrastructure will have to manage permissions to ensure that no one is using data in an unauthorized manner. All data – first, second and third party. It’s a huge effort. Complying with the provisions of GDPR is table stakes. You have to do it or risk pretty hefty fines.

Brands and publishers will need to be transparent about data collection and use. In order to obtain, and retain, permission to use customer data to target, retarget, market, they will need to demonstrate value for their use of this information. As perceived by the customer. This is the opportunity and the silver lining to GDPR. It is now far more likely that brands and publishers will invest in innovative permission-based marketing to differentiate themselves from the pack.

Beyond table stakes

We have permission, as marketers, to go beyond a transaction based commodity marketplace driven by programmatic advertising and ever more creepy targeting and retargeting. A marketplace, by the way, in which media companies risked marginalization if not extinction as brands began to realize they could create content and target it to their audiences with direct buys through Google and Facebook, without the intermediary and mark-up of a publisher. As I commented last fall:

… for publishers, re-selling each viewer at a slight mark-up for what it cost to acquire that page or video view is not sustainable. Unless you add measurable value to that view, such as increased conversions, the pyramid will eventually collapse. Brands will figure out that they can buy those views, that awareness, cheaper if they go direct.

We now can go beyond the table stakes of privacy regulation, and build the permission-based proprietary audiences that will deliver true advertiser and consumer value.

What are we delivering to the reader/viewer/listener in exchange for the permission to use the data that we seek? Is it truly differentiated from the competition? If not, think some more. You must offer unique value to make it worth giving YOU the permission to store and use personal data. This is just as true with a subscription offering. Subscriber data is still used to market the audience to advertisers, and just as subject to GDPR. The paywall only increases the demand on content value.

This is why I advise:

Make your voice matter. If your publication/channel is the go-to source for the audience, your editorial voice becomes relevant again. Even though the brand can buy your audience elsewhere, it cannot buy your editorial endorsement anywhere but from you.

Other things to think about:

Community – Building a community around your content through exclusives, discounts on services, events (on and off line). Digiday is an example of a publisher creating a community of senior marketing execs around a paywall offering.
Infuse your content with your customer — whether sponsored content created by influencers, or crowdsourced reviews or live stream events in which they can participate.
New content streams. Go beyond digital and video, and look at podcasts and events as ways to lock in your unique value, your unique audience. Vox Media and Crooked Media are two examples of firms successfully exploring new content streams.
Newsletters are the ultimate permission-based marketing tool, so don’t use yours just as a billboard for content that is consumable on your site. Add additional value, shoppable links and images, even original content that is only available in your newsletter.

Your objective is to create an ecosystem of value in which your user (or prospect if you are a brand) regularly extends and renews permission to use her/his private data. You still have to abide by the GDPR rules, and be transparent about how you use data, whether you share it with others, and so on, but provided you don’t betray the trust of your reader/viewer/listener by breaking those promises, at the end you will have something far more valuable than retargeting data.

You’ll have a loyal audience. And that can’t bought. It can only be earned.

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Agree with my ideas, but not sure how to get started? I can help with everything from strategy development and content creation to influencer, digital and social marketing, performance audits and presentation decks. Even better, the first hour is free. Email sgetgood@getgood.com to book your free consultation. I’ll give you some thought starters during our conversation, and we can go from there.

11 ingredients for digital success in 2018

December 31, 2017 by Susan Getgood

The past 6 months have seen tremendous upheaval in digital media. Companies that were once high flyers — Mashable, Rolling Stone, Time — sold for a fraction of their former (perceived) value. Whether you think this is massive disruption or simply inevitable course correction, the ingredients for digital success have evolved.

It’s not enough to have a mobile-first site with strong traffic, SEO friendly content, a way to deliver video pre-roll and a good native offering. You DO have to have that, but digital success in 2018 requires a few more ingredients. Scale alone is not enough.

Here’s my recipe for digital success in 2018. Whether you are a digital publisher or a brand extending its content strategy, below is my take on how to turn readers and viewers into true audience that you can then further monetize — events, products, e-commerce etc.

The Basics
1. Great content. With a point of view
Content with a point of view will be more successful than content that tries to be all things to all people. Vanilla is a lovely flavor, but if everyone offers that same vanilla, content becomes a commodity. Point of view isn’t necessarily an opinion or a “stand;” you don’t have to be news or hard-hitting to have one. It can be everything from a niche target, an overt POV, to a more subtle theme or vision underlying and holding together the content you create. It is NOT a mission statement or manifesto, although those can part of a point of view.

2. A deep understanding of and commitment to your customers — both the one you have and the one you want.
Point of view is likely something you share with your target audience or customers. The more you know about them the easier (but never easy) it will be to build a product they will love. This is equally true if your project is 100% digital, or digital is simply the gateway to purchasing a tangible good. You also have to be committed to looking at your business with a customer-centric lens. Everything truly does depend on making the customer happy. Shortcuts may get you through in the short-term but long-term success for any brand is about delivering to customer needs. Consider expanding the C- suite to include a Chief Customer Officer to be the steward of this effort in partnership with client service, marketing, sales, finance and operations.

3. Data, data, data
Data drives decisions. What gets measured, gets managed. You’ve probably heard these phrases more than once in your career. Simply put, the things we measure are the things we can effectively act upon. If you don’t have data, you can’t adjust, optimize, improve. Of course, for measurement to be effective, you have to define a baseline for success up front so you measure the right things, not every thing. All data is not equally important.

Analytics (website, social platforms, campaign performance) are just the first part of a comprehensive research plan. Third party research data is the second. And proprietary research – into your audience, your content performance, market opinion — is the connective tissue that brings analytics and third party data together into meaningful, actionable information that you can use to make your content better and differentiate from the competition.

Traffic Drivers
Our first set of ingredients are the traffic drivers. How do you find the audience and bring them to your content?

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is your first, and best, friend for building traffic. Nothing — not even paid search — replaces strong organic search results. You can build an internal SEO team or contract an SEO firm to develop your SEO plan and process. However you choose to operationalize SEO, it should be a continuous loop between the content creation team and the SEO management team. But search alone is not enough to ensure success, and you shouldn’t expect it to deliver all your traffic. Against one measure, it scales amazingly well. One well written, search-optimized article can deliver many readers against multiple queries. On another, not so much. You acquire every reader one search at a time. To achieve any scale, you have to keep feeding the beast fresh new content all the time. Even though you can update older content, you still need staff to write and edit. Search is the foundation of your traffic strategy, but it isn’t the whole structure.

5. Social traffic
Social traffic isn’t the panacea either, but you need a robust social strategy to distribute your content on the popular social platforms. Specifically Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter (in descending order of importance). Earned, or “organic,” mentions of your brand are important and you should by all means start with a social communications strategy that leverages your owned social accounts to spread the word about your content and initiatives. But don’t expect earned social to get the volume you need. For most brands, organic social reach is a delightful myth. While your audience may follow your accounts for the news, they aren’t going to re-share it at the volume you need to reach new audiences. And then there’s the fact that the algorithms of social (Facebook in particular) are DESIGNED to push you toward paid social. Ads, boosted posts etc. Don’t fight it. Embrace it. Make it work.

My advice is to post your news and stories and get the organic reach that your audience will naturally deliver. Then boost the best performing posts to reach new readers. This will increase the potential pool that might share the content, thus increasing your earned media. Branded content in the form of influencer-generated posts is an important ingredient; consider MarketingLand’s report this week on research done by social analytics firm Shareablee showing that viral reach from branded content ads on Facebook eclipses standard ads.

6. Native advertising
The power of native content is why you should use your web and social analytics, and even your SEO analyses, to identify the best content to put in native advertising units. Publishers may prefer to promote the branded content they create in their native units, but increasingly they are opening their inventory up to native programmatic as well as premium native advertising using content sourced elsewhere. Plus of course services like Taboola and Outbrain, although I recommend that you regularly evaluate whether the traffic you get from less-premium sources is the same quality that you get from more premium sources of traffic.

But like SEO, social posts and native ads deliver one reader, one viewer, one click at a time. Scale requires volume. Every increase has a real cost to produce and distribute the content. It’s effective, but not terribly efficient.

In addition to growing your unique users, you need to convert those one-time readers and viewers into a loyal audience. You want them to keep coming back for more, and consuming more than one piece of content at each visit. In analytics terms, you want your uniques to keep growing, but your page and video views to eclipse uniques. In my opinion, 4x is a baseline for good, and you really want it to be much more than that. Our next set of critical ingredients are the engagement and loyalty drivers.

Engagement and Loyalty Drivers
These ingredients deepen your readers’/viewers’ relationship with your content.

7. Newsletters
What’s old is new again! Newsletters are the best mechanism to get casual readers/visitors into into your content ecosystem and regularly coming back for new content. Because they are permission-based, with the user having control over what data is shared with the publisher, they are more compatible with privacy regulations like the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will become increasingly important for any firm doing business with EU nationals when GDPR takes effect in May 2018.

That said, getting permission from the user is only part of the privacy mandate; you also have to protect it, so your newsletter tech needs to be super smart. Bottom line though, the more you can get the reader/viewer to share with you (first party data), the less you will be restricted by potential regulations/restrictions on the use of third party data from the big databases. That means delivering real value in exchange for personal information, and the more you ask, the more value you must add.

Don’t use your newsletter simply as an index to articles on your site. Folks may subscribe but they won’t necessarily become loyal readers (and repeat visitors) if the newsletter is nothing more than a promotional tool for your articles. Take the time to create some original content around the articles you recommend. Follow the example of Digiday; its daily newsletter highlights articles from the Digiday site, but it places them in context, giving the reader value even before she clicks over.

8. Recommendations
Website design matters. It is all well and good to say that no one comes to your home page, so giving it undue importance is wasted effort. For many, site visits are driven by search and social directly to the content. But the structure of content on the site once someone gets there and their ability to discover new, relevant content matters. A lot.

Publishers and brands need to invest in recommendation engines and native units that bring readers/viewers deeper into content based on their interests. Baseline is a smart keyword/topic match to the article/video they are reading or viewing, but we need to push the envelope on this. As we build stable databases of loyal readers’ preferences and past viewing habits, we should make inferences about the type of additional content they would like to consume, both editorial but also branded content. The better we match our recommendations to their interests, the more likely they are to consume multiple pages of content by choice, and not just because you split the content up into 7 pages.

9. Video (but smarter)
Digital publishers by and large have struggled with video. There is huge advertiser demand, nowhere near enough quality inventory, and strategy after strategy to manufacture it has met with lukewarm success at best. Facebook seems to be the hands-down winner for delivering targeted video eyeballs, followed by the video aggregators like Jun Group who have fed the digital demand of both publishers and brand-direct.

What seems clear to me, whether you are looking at digital, linear or OTT, is that successful video strategy is grounded in more than just delivering consumer eyeballs through targeting and audience acquisition strategies. If you BUY every view for slightly less than you re-sell it to your advertiser client, your business cannot scale efficiently. It works for a while, but eventually the advertiser figures out that she can buy that same eyeball direct.

To be successful with video, it comes back to figuring out what resonates with your audience, what fits with your editorial or brand mission, and most importantly, what you can do better, smarter than the other guy. I wrote about this in September. Success is rooted in smart content strategy, incorporating video where it makes sense for the story, not simply to deliver advertising. We shouldn’t pivot to video; we should integrate video into a multi-format digital strategy that includes all sorts of content. For a successful publisher’s take on this issue, check out Digiday’s report on Bustle’s strategy.

Even if your content is primarily text, and doesn’t seem to “need” video to tell the story, for example B2B content, you need to start at least thinking about video. Pew Research reported this spring that millenials are now the largest living generation : “In 2016, there were an estimated 79.8 million Millennials (ages 18 to 35 in that year) compared with 74.1 million Baby Boomers (ages 52 to 70).”

This generation looks at and engages with content — both digital and IRL — differently than the older generations. For many in the cohort, video is the preferred communication medium. Business sites that want to reach this new worker need to think about how to incorporate video into their content strategy.

For what its worth, I think it helps to think about video as 5 basic types.

News / Documentary — current events, educational, fact-based. Your purpose is to convey specific information to viewers, and you may or may not have a specific point of view and desire to convince / persuade.
Comedy — Make ‘em laugh.
Caught on Tape — There is a reason “America’s Funniest Home Videos” has been on television for more than 20 years. People LOVE to watch real people and animals in funny, silly situations. The quality of the videos may be dodgy, but the quality of the engagement is not. See also babies, puppies and kittens.
How-To – do just about anything. Cook, apply make-up, style a wardrobe, decorate, garden, change a tire, take pictures, make videos, even business topics can come to life in video. You name it, there is a how-to video to show you the way. This is the easiest type of content for publishers and brands to add to their sites, and our appetite for it is insatiable.
Scripted entertainment with HIGH production values — the market has been cornered by linear and OTT properties created by the big entertainment studios, especially at long-form, but I think there is room for scripted short-form where talented amateurs can be competitive with the big guys.

In my opinion, there are two successful video strategies. You can specialize in one type of video, and go deep and long to meet the needs of your audience for that type of content on your channel. In an increasingly crowded marketplace, you must have an unserved or underserved niche to be successful. The other strategy, which is the one most publishers and brands would be well-served by, is that you integrate the appropriate type into your story telling as needed, but your focus is the stories. You don’t need to specialize in one form as much as you need to make sure that the video you are creating is additive to the stories your audience comes to you for.

Note that some of these formats lend themselves naturally to the development of community, ie the fans that are loyal viewers. For example, comedy shows, reality TV, and character driven drama or comedy. Others are more likely to be driven by search engine results such as tutorials. Current events are a bit of a blend. We may be fans of a particular franchise such as The Rachel Maddow Show, but much of the time, we are driven by search about a specific news item.

Make small, smart investments in your original video programming, and then look at the numbers – what drives traffic and engagement? Do more of that. Drop anything that doesn’t work, no matter how much you love it.

10. Community
Influencers must become part of your content ecosystem. For branded content but also more broadly to extend the footprint of a publication or brand authentically into the community. This takes a different shape if you are a brand using your content strategy to directly promote your company and its products or a publisher, aggregating content and monetizing through advertising, but the fundamental principle is the same.

Go beyond seeing your customers as content or product consumers, and engage your audience in the content creation process. Last fall, I outlined how this might look for a digital publisher. The most important thing to remember is that you want to create multiple touch points for your customers into your brand or publication, and leverage their contributions as much as you can. Everything from deep relationships and extended partnerships with brand ambassadors or top-tier contributors to simple content creation programs with mid-tier influencers and earned media with micro influencers.

11. E-commerce
Many publishers are leaving money on the table by not integrating shopping into their sites. For branded content for sure, but also to earn against the products used in the normal course of business. Where can I get the clear mixer bowl in that video? I love what the host was wearing. Show me similar outfits. One needs no further proof that this is a smart strategy than that Amazon has launched an influencer program to develop branded content as an extension of its affiliate marketing program.

Online retailers like ShopStyle have a robust affiliate program as well as content programs using influencers. Publishers like Diply, Mashable and Bustle have incorporated e-commerce on their sites, to varying degrees:

CRO and President of Diply Dan Lagani sat down with Cheddar to talk about the potential of e-commerce for digital publishers.
Bustle in the Wall Street Journal: “The company has also signed additional video deals with Facebook Inc. and YouTube, and boosted its affiliate commerce, where it takes a cut of product sales generated by links included in its posts.”

But for long-term success, publishers need to develop e-commerce strategies that do not depend on Amazon affiliate income; Amazon will likely start cutting its affiliate commission rates as it further develops its own content strategy. Whether they choose to go direct to brand, partner with the affiliate networks like CJ Affiliate and Rakuten or partner with retailers, the key will be to integrate the shopping cart in such a way that it is non-intrusive to, but integrated with the content experience. The smarter, the better. Bonus for integrating influencers into the mix, as ShopStyle does.

The other e-commerce play is to have your own product line. Not every publisher has the wherewithal, the brand or the stomach for this, but if you have your own products, you are the original channel 😃 Subscription boxes were all the rage this year; no matter what your interests, you can probably sign up for a box of merchandise to be delivered to your door every month.

The garnish — a podcast

A podcast, my last ingredient for you, is more of a garnish than a requirement, so I am not counting it among the 11required ingredients for 2018, but I suspect it will be one by 2019.

Podcasting is the most social of social media. The format is so simple — a conversation between/among two or more people that makes us feel, with the intimacy of sound, like we are seated at the table too.

According to Edison Research, podcast reach has grown by 50% over the last four years, and nearly a quarter of Americans age 12 or older listen to a podcast monthly. Podcasts are most popular among 18-34s, but teens and the 35-54s are also listeners. 41% of Americans listen to some form of “speech” audio on any given day.

Right now, the playing field, and opportunity, is wide open to all. The duopoly of Facebook and Google are no better situated than any other player to establish a podcast audience and generate revenue from (and with) that audience. Even though many big advertisers are still waiting for listener metrics to get better, Edison projected podcasts to earn $220 million in ad revenues in 2017. Publishers searching for new sources of revenue would be well served by considering a podcast. It ticks a lot of boxes — content, community, native advertising, low barrier to entry and easy to experiment with formats.

The fast and simple way in is to sponsor an existing podcast that aligns with your brand values/proposition and reaches your target audience. The longer way around, and the more lucrative for a publisher, is to create a new podcast that delivers unique value for your brand and to your advertisers. I highly recommend looking to your community of readers/viewers/influencers for both hosts and guests.

And there you have it — 11 ingredients for digital success plus a bonus garnish. Thanks for sticking with me to the end.

A practical definition of content marketing

June 8, 2014 by Susan Getgood

Disclosure: I am Vice President of Sales & Influencer Marketing at BlogHer. Advertising and social media marketing programs are a significant source of revenue for my company and for the bloggers in our advertising network.

Content marketing. It is the hot topic of 2014. And like “native advertising,” there are as many definitions of and opinions about it as there are marketing pundits on the interwebs.

Far be it from me to back away from a challenge.

Linguistically, content marketing simply is using “content” to market products and services. But what exactly is this thing called “content.” Channeling Inigo Montoya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inigo_Montoya), it is entirely possible that this word does not mean exactly what we think.

Let’s stay simple to start. Brands are using “content” as distinct from “advertising” to promote their products. This can take many forms:

sponsored posts — on blogs and mass media sites (advertorial)
sponsored editorial
in native ad units
editorial on brand sites

Sponsored posts often integrate the brand into a story, not dissimilar from old style advertorial, but quite a lot of this content is just, well, content brought to you by a sponsor, either intermediated by a publisher, like Forbes BrandVoice or Mashable or direct, like Coca-Cola’s new content site, Coca-Cola Journey.

Example of integration of sponsored editorial: Is Your Cash Working for You?, sponsored by American Express

On some level, this is the fulfillment of the promise of the World Wide Web — build a terrific website and your customers will come to you, with the twist that we finally get that reading about the products isn’t the attraction. It’s useful and when you are ready to buy, critical, but product websites are selling tools, not marketing tools. They matter once you are in the consideration phase.

What attracts the consumer is storytelling.

And now brands are joining their customers as the publishers of content. If 2004 was the beginning of the rise of the citizen journalist, 2014 may be the birth of the brand journalist. This has implications for the quality of the news we consume, and already has had an impact on mainstream media. Advertorial content is increasingly front and center on mainstream media sites, with varying degrees of disclosure. More on that another day.

The long term impact of this shift on the independent, read objective, journalist remains to be seen but the shift to brands as the direct funder of our news feed is already exerting a tremendous pressure on prices.

The quality of online content is also at some risk… The costs of feeding a machine that relies on new stories every day is why newspapers began selling advertising in the first place. Unlike an advert, which is “create once, play many,” and works because of its simple, entertaining, purchase-oriented message, content marketing requires new stuff every day. The temptation is strong to sacrifice quality for volume.

But simply shoving a lot of words into a funnel isn’t going to have the long term effect we want. We need deeply engaging content that will connect consumers with our value proposition in a meaningful way and encourage them to consider our product or service. Bottom line, much as I love the quizzes, and top 10 lists, their impact is fleeting when it comes to long term engagement.

Collectively, we –marketers, consumers and publishers — need to take a step back and commit to creating and supporting GOOD content.

What’s good content in this context? It’s well-written content that engages the audience with a story, and connects with the brand message in some fashion. It can be tightly integrated like a review, loosely integrated like many sponsored posts or simply aligned editorial brought to you by the brand, with a brand message at the end of the post or article.

While brand marketers can, and should, produce material to feed the content marketing machine, the best stories will come from the community. No matter how well we write, we shouldn’t try to copy community-created content. It is extremely difficult to excise our passion for our brand from the story, and, as has been proven time and again, with good stories and bad, there is nothing more powerful than an engaged consumer.

Use your marketing passion to create the brand material for your content funnel that consumers rely on for more information about a product – micro sites, Facebook pages, Pinterest “catalogs,” and help your customers channel their passion into storytelling. Find and nurture your evangelists. Let them create the content and stories that matter with your support, either directly sponsored by you, or syndicated for re-use. A story may not be new to you, but it will be new to someone.

Personally, I’m excited about the potential for content marketing, and true partnerships between companies and their customers, brands and bloggers, to tell the stories that connect us with each other and with the brands we love. It’s what I’ve been hoping this interweb would morph into since I started writing about the space in 2004.

Here are some oldies but goodies from my archives on the topic of the brand-blogger connection:

Other writers who touch on this topic that you might enjoy: Rebecca Lieb, Christopher S. Penn.

Two levels of getting it right with blogger relations

September 17, 2010 by Susan Getgood

: Image by marymactavish via Flickr

Recently I was interviewed by Chief Marketer about how brands are reaching out to women through social media. The reporter was interested in how brands were and were not “getting it right.”

As I wrote here last month (OMG, that long), it’s become increasingly clear to me that the brands that are doing excellent work using social media tools to reach their customers generally have done and do a good job in traditional media. Sure, even the best companies make the occasional mistake with a campaign, product or program but for the most part, their marketing communications are sharp (often clever) and do not patronize the consumer.

These companies already understand that it’s important to respect your customer. In all that you do. They just have to figure out how to translate that imperative using the social media toolset in a way that is authentic to the brand and relevant to the customer.

It’s more than just getting the mechanics right. That’s the price of entry into social media engagement with your customer. I’ve been saying it for years, and I’ll keep on saying it: there is NO excuse for misaddressed e-mail – for example, the “Dear XXX” pitch about toys (children’s toys) that many parent bloggers got last week – or grammar errors – like “conscious” for “conscience,” also from last week’s in-box.

As Marketing Mommy said on Twitter:

@sgetgood My reply to him: “Despite my efforts to break into the porn star business, I’ve yet to use the moniker XXX.”

The poor interns come in for a lot of flack when we talk about these often humorous mechanical mistakes, but really, it is management’s job to create a system with the proper checks and balances.

If you MUST mass e-mail bloggers (and I wish you wouldn’t), invest in a decent CRM system and assign your interns to getting the data entered properly. Not on cutting and pasting pitches. Buy everyone who drafts, edits or sends customer facing emails a dictionary and make it a requirement that it be displayed on their desks. Why? Because it will be a constant visual reminder to check not just the spelling of words, but their meaning. Spell check and online dictionaries can’t do that.

The mechanics are the first, most basic level of getting blogger outreach right. We can do it. I know we can.

Your message is the second, more important level of “getting it right.” My favorite fantasy is that next year, even more companies and their agencies will see the light and understand that what they should be doing is sharing compelling ideas and stories with their customers. Exciting things that will make them want to write about the brand.

Instead of trotting out formulaic pitches and recycling the same product launch templates from project to project, client to client, brand to brand.

Be careful though.This requires more than just identifying the blogger’s passion that drives interest in your product and inserting the message point in an otherwise bland pitch. That’s a start (I guess), but it’s not enough. There is honestly still far too much of this sort of pitch circulating in the ether.

Really getting it right requires that you connect with that passion. To do that, you need to know the bloggers you are reaching out to. It still comes back to the 3 R’s as coined by good friend and colleague David Wescott in 2007 – respect your customer, be relevant and build a relationship over time.

Good blogger relations is still (and always will be) a commitment, not a one night stand.

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Pennsylvania Governor’s Conference for Women ticket giveaway – Stay tuned: I will pick a winner this weekend from the comments on this post. I also have one ticket each for the Texas Conference for Women in November and the Massachusetts Conference for Women in December. Watch for a post next week about the conferences and details on how I plan to give away those passes. More than likely it will be on Twitter, not here on the blog as finding time to write is a bit problematic for the next two weeks due to my schedule.

Next week, I will be in NYC most of the week, digging in to my second week on the job as VP Sales Marketing for BlogHer and speaking at a PRSA event on Friday. The following week, I travel to Orlando to present a social media workshop at AARP’s Orlando@50+ conference.

In between all of that we are trying to find a place to live for 3 people, 3 dogs and 2 cats. Fun times! We need a rental within about an hour’s commute to Manhattan by train until we sell our house in Massachusetts. If you’ve got leads, let me know. We’re leaning toward western Connecticut but open to all suggestions.

BlogHer Marketing Lessons, Part 2: Influencer relations and #gapmagic

August 13, 2010 by Susan Getgood

Regardless of the industry segment or specific details of the campaign, the best influencer relations programs have one thing in common: the value exchange between brand and influencer is balanced. Each gives something of value to the other, both are satisfied with the exchange and nobody feels taken advantage of.

In paid media like advertising, this exchange is easy to understand. Publisher — whether online or off, broadcast or print — develops an advertising package based on audience demographics and content. Company pays an agreed-upon rate for its ad to appear within the media vehicle. Publisher gets money; advertiser gets eyeballs.

In influencer relations, the equation is a little more complex, but it’s not rocket science.

For the influencer, balanced value means that the program offers something interesting and relevant to his or her interests or activities, and the “ask” — what the brand hopes the influencer will do as a result of the offer — is proportionate to what the influencer has or will receive from the brand. And let’s be clear — there’s always an ask, even if it’s only implied and the pitch includes the oft-repeated words, “if you choose to write about this on your blog…”

If the company asks too much of the influencers — for example, multiple posts and status updates in exchange for a few tubes of toothpaste — the value equation is unbalanced.

From the company side of the equation, the cost of the program has to be justified by the results. That means setting, and measuring, realistic objectives, and culling out programs that don’t deliver. The best way to do this is to build long term relationships with the online influencers that truly matter for your brand.

I tend to prefer simple programs aimed at small numbers of influencers so the brands can really focus on the “fit” with the influencer and add sufficient value to the pitch. Plus, we all like to feel special, and nothing says “not special” like a promotion aimed at hundreds.

One of the best influencer relations programs I’ve seen recently (and full disclosure, I was a beneficiary of it) was the Gap’s outreach prior to the 2010 BlogHer conference. The company reached out to the conference speakers, offering us a styling appointment at our local Gap where we’d get to try on the new Fall clothes.

The initial email was fairly vague; while I’m sure most of the women assumed we’d get a gift card of some sort, there was no specific dollar amount mentioned. The fun and convenience of a styling appointment at a local store, combined with the fact that many women in the BlogHer community were already acquainted with the WOM agency doing the outreach was enough. It was easy to say yes because we didn’t have to do much.

The genius of the program was its generosity. Instead of the token gift card I’m sure many (including me) expected, every speaker got a $400 clothing allowance. That’s two or three outfits, depending on what you picked.

There was no requirement to wear the clothes at the BlogHer conference, although it was clear that the brand hoped the participants would. In the document circulated to the stores (yes, I peeked — it was attached to the rack of clothes I was picking from), we were described as influential women, and the reason for the promotion our participation as speakers at the conference where our clothes would be seen by hundreds of other women.

As for results, many speakers tweeted and blogged about their experience and most wore their new Gap clothes during the conference. Quite simply, we were grateful for the generosity and it was fun sharing the experience with friends and fellow speakers. And that’s where the company gets its value in the exchange.

Smart marketing all around. Had the gift been less generous, I’m certain the activity at and around BlogHer would have been far more muted. Had the outreach numbers been smaller — only a select few top blogs versus all the speakers, regardless of size of blog or niche — the impact would have been far less. Had the outreach been focused on the top mom or style blogs that normally get such offers, it would have been just another influencer relations program. Instead, by reaching out to the small group of speakers, the Gap recognized the women for their achievements. That’s special.

No influencer relations program escapes without a few criticisms, and the Gap Magic promotion is no exception. I think there would have been less criticism if folks were more aware that BlogHer strives to have 80% new speakers every year. The speaker roster doesn’t equate to an A-list of any kind, unless smart accomplished women willing to share their knowledge and experiences with each other has become one.

If that’s the case, I call that an Amen-List, not an A-list. This year, I think there were more small, niche bloggers than ever before speaking on topics like loving your small blog and work-life balance. For some, it was their first time ever speaking at an industry conference.

The Gap Magic program was not an official BlogHer sponsor program. Had it been, perhaps there would have been more emphasis on the merit basis for the selection of participants. Attention clothing brands: something to think about for next year.

As for ROI, it’s too soon to tell, but the program must have been pretty inexpensive, given the total costs of retail marketing. According to agency Brand About Town, about 100 women participated. That’s $40,000 in clothes at retail price. Even if you add in a generous amount for overhead and agency costs beyond the wholesale cost of the clothes, it’s still far less expensive than an ad in a fashion magazine.

On principle, with BlogHer, I tend to prefer the programs of official conference sponsors because the sponsor fees offset registration costs for the attendees. In my next post, I’ll talk about the sightseeing trip to Ellis Island that sponsor Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project did the day before the conference started. Preview: it rocked!