Yesterday, Facebook showed me the ad above for lingerie. In case you’re wondering, NO – I’m not a cross dresser who likes to dress up in baby dolls and teddies.

While it was a good laugh for my friends, this ad campaign is a typical example of a rookie mistake in online marketing: not taking advantage of targeting options in online advertising.

Online advertising is not like traditional advertising

If an advertiser could only choose a single traditional advertising channel to run their campaign, they would probably choose the channel that would reach the most people. If it was a choice between The Star, Malay Mail and The Sun, the advertiser would most likely choose The Star because it has the highest circulation and biggest reach.

But there’s a problem when doing that – not all of The Star’s readership will be interested in the advertiser’s ad.

Fortunately, that problem is abated / reduced with online advertising. On the web, advertisers can track web user’s interactions to a very detailed level. For example, they can choose to show ads based on location (by looking up your IP address), interest (based on which websites you visit) or behaviour (based on what ads or links you click).

In Facebook, you can take that even further. Facebook knows A LOT about you, so advertisers can target ads on your gender, your birthday, relationship status and even your friends.

So in the example above, Secretnite.com the lingerie store could easily show their ads only to women. This would reduce the cost of their ad campaign because they are reducing the reach (audience). This will also result in better advertising ROI because money is not wasted advertising to men who are not interested in buying lingerie.

Target Facebook ads by demographic

How to sell lingerie to men

“But some men may want to buy lingerie for their wives or girlfriends,” you say.

That’s exactly right, but there’s a better way to do it: Show men a different ad.

Because advertisers can easily target audiences on the web, it’s not all or nothing like in traditional advertising. Secretnite.com could show one ad for their female audience, and another version to their male audience. Better yet, they could show the ad only to men who are in a relationship.

The goal of the men-only ad is the same (to get the audience to buy the product) but you can make it more effective by changing the content of the ad. Here are some examples of lingerie ads targeted at men:

• Give her an anniversary present she won’t forget
• Show her how much she turns you on
• Buy lingerie discreetly through our online store

Think of it as advertising for women’s lingerie in FHM or Auto Driver. If the advertiser knows their audience are men, would they show them ads that were made for women? Of course not!

In summary, online advertising allows you to target your audience much better. By doing so, you can reduce your audience group to something very specific so you can make a very targeted offer or deliver a very relevant message. The benefit is that you will save money on your ad campaign, and get better results.

Finally, here’s a great article on How to Create Successful Facebook Ads

If you thought this article was useful, please share it with your friends. And if you have questions about online advertising, feel free to ask in the comments below, or contact my friends at Level5 Creative for a proposal.

P.S. I’m not singling out Secretnite.com to shame them, they were just an eye-grabbing example

P.P.S. Lingerie is pronounced lonj-er-AY

How To Sell Lingerie To Men A.K.A. Why You Should Target Your Online Ads – originally published on Buzzmedia Online Marketing

I was privileged to have the opportunity to be involved in UNICEF Malaysia’s media engagement workshop last week. Salt Media, a young and dynamic public relations agency based in Kuala Lumpur, led the workshop and I focused on social media topics.

The workshop was attended by a group of 30 participants from local NGOs including Malaysian Aids Council, Mercy, Malaysian Child Resource Institute and Shelter Home. After an introduction into UNICEF’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, the workshop was split into traditional media/PR taught by Salt Media and new/social media taught by me.

My sessions were shorter than the workshops I usually conduct, but we managed to cover topics such as the social media marketing process, Facebook marketing and social media strategy. I’m extremely encouraged because our local NGOs are definitely making a serious effort to make use of social media to champion their causes.

To the participants, thank you for spending a day and a half with me. If you have questions, feel free to get in touch with me or just post them in the comments. Thanks also to UNICEF for the opportunity and privilege to be involved in your work.

And finally, thank you to partners Salt Media who invited me to the workshop. If you’re looking for a (fun, non-traditional) public relations agency who has a clear grasp on the changing media landscape in Malaysia, I highly recommend checking out Salt Media.

Photo courtesy UNICEF Malaysia and Salt Media on Facebook.

Buzzmedia conducts social media training for NGOs at UNICEF workshop – originally published on Buzzmedia Online Marketing

Ganesh Kumar Bangah, Group CEO of Friendster and MOL Sdn Bhd, was in the spotlight yesterday for using social media to bad mouth a competitor.

The competitor in question is OffGamers, a company that does microtransactions for game currency. They posted a link to promote their service on their Facebook Page yesterday and Ganesh took to opportunity to post a snide comment. The situation devolved into one where the CEO of one of Asia’s largest internet companies taking cheap shots at OffGamers.

View the entire thread on OffGamers’s Facebook Page

The Friendster CEO’s actions is a case study of exactly the wrong thing to do with social media. So what can we learn from this episode?

Don’t Bad Mouth or Snipe Your Competition

As unhappy as one may be of their competitors, one should never try to “do something about it”. Many times rash actions will backfire and result in the competitor getting even more publicity. It’s also petty and casts a negative light on the person posting at best, and the whole company at worst.

If a response is absolutely necessary, always plan in advance and post a full, official statement on your own website, not in the competitor’s web properties.

Always Be Respectful

The goal of engaging in social media is to grow your network and social capital. This is based on trust and respect, and you must first show respect to be respected yourself.

Engaging in social media is very similar to engaging in any other social situation, for example a networking event or party. What Ganesh did is similar bad mouthing OffGamers in their office or Christmas party. In his last comment, Ganesh said that he wasn’t gate crashing – this is the way social media works.

This is absolutely 100% wrong and it shows everyone watching how incredibly arrogant Ganesh must be to think he has the right to do such a thing.

Always Be Humble

Your ability to comment on other people’s websites and profiles is not a right. It’s a privilege which you should never forget. Even if you are the market leader, be gracious and humble. Don’t burn bridges and make enemies publicly. As the Group CEO of Friendster, Ganesh should know how quickly things can change and one day he may find the position reversed.

Finally…

Remember that every action you take online today can and will be recorded for posterity in Google’s cache, Archive.org, tweets and blog posts like this one, and some marketing case study. It takes only 1 dumb move to start people talking and to find negative results about your company on the 1st page of Google search results.

For the record I thought that OffGamers’ response were excellent and didn’t allow themselves to be dragged into a mud-slinging competition. Their approach was to take the high ground and stand up for themselves, which is what other companies should do in this situation. Kudos to the OffGamers team.

Friendster Group CEO trolls competitor’s Facebook Page, demonstrates wrong way to use social media – originally published on Buzzmedia Online Marketing

Last week I conducted 2 separate workshops for Rockwills Business Solutions and New Straits Times. It was a challenging week that tested my voice and my stamina. It was also very gratifying to the able to share my knowledge with the participants.

The participants were superb and really encouraging. I want to thank P1 WiMAX who provided broadband for all workshops.

I also want to give a big shout out to Rockwills will writer Evanna Phoon who was admitted to hospital for pre-labour but yet wanted to Skype in to hear me deliver the rest of the workshop! Check out her video blog from the delivery room, with my voice in the background over Skype. Talk about commitment!

Rockwills Social Media Marketing Workshop

The Rockwills Business Solutions workshop was interesting because I had to tailor the programme for financial services professionals. Because their target audience were mainstream consumers, the workshop was very Facebook marketing centric. I will be developing this further into a full Facebook Marketing workshop.

New Straits Times Blogging Workshop

This was one of the most fun workshops that I’ve conducted, because the topic was narrow enough so it didn’t overwhelm the participants. In addition to lots and lots of content about WordPress 3.0, each participant had a practice blog to play with at the workshop.

Thank You P1 WiMAX

Malaysia’s leading 4G broadband provider P1 WiMAX sponsored internet connectivity for both workshops. They have continued to improve their coverage and service and the internet was excellent throughout both workshops. Without them the workshops would not have been as interactive and hands-on and the participants and myself really appreciate their support.

P1 and Intel today announced WiMAX-ready 4G laptops and netbooks from Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, MSI and Toshiba. In conjunction with the launch, P1 is offering a special deal at PC Show Berjaya Times Square on 10 July where you can purchase devices from its partners at up to 90% discount and up to 6 months of complimentary service.

This is an exclusive announcement that P1 has shared with specific friends and partners. See this page for info on the laptops and netbooks on offer and call 1-300-800-888 for further information on this offer.

I survived 2 workshops in a row – thank you New Straits Times, Rockwills and P1 WiMAX – originally published on Buzzmedia Online Marketing

It’s World Cup season and we’re being inundated with TV adverts in between the games. As usual there are the creative ones as well as really bad ones. One bad advert in particular is the MyEG advert featuring Deborah Henry. Twitter users were not shy in expressing their thoughts of the advert.

Count me in as one of those who thinks the MyEG advert is a poor effort.

However, as bad as the advert is, I’m not sure that MyEG should drop it. In fact they may even be doing the right thing by sticking with it.

MyEG has been running other adverts with this theme for a while now–this theme being girls in striking red outfits, and more recently – Glee style show tunes. The adverts aren’t particularly clever but seem to be doing the job of raising awareness, generating word of mouth and getting the message across that Malaysians can get of e-Government services done through their website. (This is my own opinion – I have no numbers to back this up)

I would argue that if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. Sure it’s a silly advert and maybe even downright stupid, but if it works and it’s generating an acceptable level of return then by all means MyEG should continue with the campaign.

Many times brands try too hard to appear hip, cool and witty. Unfortunately they don’t always pull it off. Also take note that hip, cool and witty ads aren’t guaranteed to grow your market share or win new customers. If you are lucky enough to find a formula that works, you should stick with it and try to improve on the formula.

This applies even more so to small businesses. Small businesses don’t have the luxury to create clever campaigns and promotions. What small businesses have to do is to win customers, even if they only have old school, run-of-the-mill tactics and ideas.

And to tie it back to the World Cup theme – a scrappy goal is better than no goals. So don’t worry about scoring a well-placed lightning strike. Just side foot the ball into the net.

What do you think? Should MyEG stick with or drop their ad campaign?

For the record though, I think MyEG should take this experience to heart and get their ad agency to come up with better, less cheesy ideas.

When to stick with or drop an unpopular ad campaign – originally published on Buzzmedia Online Marketing

Step one of marketing your business online is to get found. There are lots of ways to do this but the most popular tactic by far is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s pretty easy to grasp the fundamental, but it can start to get really technical if you really want to do it well. That’s why there’s such a proliferation of SEO consultants and “con sultans”. Luckily, you can fire your SEO consultant with the new Scribe SEO service.

Scribe is an automated service that analyzes your content and then makes suggestions on how to improve your content. It does this automatically via CMS like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, or manually via its website. In my opinion, Scribe is a game-changer that can light a fire under your current SEO efforts.

3rd place for 'facebook contest ideas'

I’ve been using Scribe for a few weeks now and am already seeing results. My recent post on Facebook Contest Ideas is now ranked 3rd on Google and Yahoo for the search term ‘facebook contest ideas‘. So how does it work? Here’s a quick video to show you how it works with WordPress.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some tips for using Scribe

Choose what keywords to rank for with your article. E.g. for the Facebook post, I chose the keywords ‘facebook contest ideas’. You should choose something that doesn’t have too much competition. That’s why I’m not targeting something like ‘SEO tips’ or ‘SEO made simple’ and instead chose the keywords ‘fire your SEO consultant’ for this post (and that’s why I’m repeating it again – fire your SEO consultant ).

Write good content. Scribe is not a magic genie that will cure bad content. Make sure your content is what people actually want to read – helpful, solves problems, answers questions or entertaining. Stuff like XYZ Co is the No. 1 player in the ABC industry with our socializing, monetizing solutions – no one wants to read that.

Don’t obsess over your SEO copywriting. Sounds like contradictory advice but remember that search engines consider other factors than just your site when computing rankings. This means that you also need to work on getting high quality incoming links and your website reputation.

Who is Scribe for?

Scribe is a paid service that starts from USD17/month. You need a certain level of technical understanding to use it well. Quick test – do you know what’s the <title> tag? If you don’t then you should study up some basic SEO first before investing in Scribe. Google’s SEO Starter Guide or Scribe’s own SEO Copywriting Report are good places to start.

For those who are currently paying SEO consultants to increase your rankings, you should seriously consider firing them if all they are doing is to optimize your pages and keyword density. You’re better off paying them to grow incoming links and website authority.

Serious bloggers and web publishers should seriously consider investing in Scribe as you can use it on unlimited websites, as long as you stay within the limit of monthly evaluations.

Conclusion

I highly recommend the Scribe service for businesses and publishers/bloggers who are serious about improving their search rankings. At the very least, explore their website and check out the tour. If you use Scribe, please leave a comment about your own experience.

Learn more about Scribe SEO

Buy Scribe now and save – use the code PROMO27 when checking out to get the Advanced Plan for the price of the Publisher Plan. That’s a saving of USD70/month! Buy now.

Disclosure: Affiliate links present in this post

Fire your SEO consultant! A review of the Scribe SEO service – originally published on Buzzmedia Online Marketing

What would you give to have the opportunity for lunch with Chris Brogan? Or if you’re a blogger, how about drinks with Darren Rowse (ProBlogger) or Brian Clark (Copyblogger)?

If you follow any of the 3 above, I’m sure you would grab such an opportunity without hesitation. I know I did when I had the chance to join the Third Tribe – a community of online marketers who value their integrity but balance it with the desire of making serious money with their businesses.

Third Tribe was started earlier this year by Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, Brian Clark and Sonia Simone and features amazing people like small business marketing champion John Jantsch, new media expert Chris Garrett, SEO extrodinaire Aaron Wall, Leo Babauta, Pamela Slim, Dave Navarro, Jonathan Fields, Hugh MacLeod, Laura Roeder and many more.

The meaning of the “Third Tribe”

Online marketing is split into 2 major camps, or “tribes”. On one side, you have the traditional internet marketers who will email you repeatedly to visit their landing page and use every urgency setting, risk reversing, psychological trick in the book to get you to buy their product. On the other side, you have the social media idealists who spend all day growing their community of Facebook friends and Twitter followers but aren’t making much money out of it.

And then there’s the Third Tribe who sits somewhere in the middle. Third Tribers use social media tools to grow their influence but also use sales tactics borrowed from internet marketers to ensure a healthy cash flow. All of the names I mentioned above, they have something to sell. But they do it in the Third Tribe way – they let you know the benefits and let you decide on your own without selling to you like a pushy credit card salesman.

Valuable marketing resources and advice

Joining the Third Tribe community costs USD47/month. They’re increasing the price to USD97/month soon but if you join before 1 June you lock in the old price. For that price you get the following:

Audio seminars on online marketing topics. Some seminars in the archive include The Quick Start Guide To Making Money Online, Email Marketing Strategies that Work and Advanced Affiliate Marketing with Social Media and SEO. Each month you get a new seminar.

Q&A with luminaries of the industry. Pose your questions in the forum and the Third Tribe founding members will answer them via live Q&A calls or in the forum itself. All of the founding members have answered my questions personally.

Conversation and networking with like minded individuals. Members of the community help each other out, ask questions and get answers, and open doors to many opportunities along the way.

The #1 reason you should join Third Tribe

Third Tribe isn’t for everyone and isn’t cheap. This ensures that those who join are really committed to investing in growing their business with a Third Tribe approach. It’s a great place for you to network, get feedback and learn from peers without having to worry if someone is trying to scam you. It’s refreshing.

The #1 reason I personally joined the Third Tribe community was because I knew the importance of continuous learning to ensure that me and my business continued to grow. So far I’ve learnt a lot, met some great people and now I invite you to come join me inside the Third Tribe.

Disclosure: There are affiliate links in this post.

Come join me (along with Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse and Brian Clark) Inside the Third Tribe – originally published on Buzzmedia Online Marketing

Facebook is an important tactic in every small business marketer’s repetoire, and the key to success in Facebook marketing is to grow your Facebook Fan base. Contests are a popular way of achieving this goal, so here are some contest ideas which you can implement for free to grow your Facebook Fan page. Take note that Facebook has some strict promotional guidelines, so be sure to read my advice on this at the conclusion of the article.

Facebook Treasure Hunt

This contest model involves posing questions to your fan page and providing clues or answers on your website. To participate, Facebook users must look for the answer on your website and then answer the question with a comment to your status update or note. Of course, to be able to comment the participant needs to be a Fan (Like) your page first.

This contest model provides the additional benefit of driving traffic to your website. For best results, make your questions easy to answer and provide a series of questions so that people have multiple opportunities to partcipate.

Most Creative

Asking fans to post a creative picture to fan pages is one of the most popular contest models on Facebook. The mechanics are simple – ask fans to snap a picture (ideally with your product) and post it to your Fan page. The most creative / interesting / clever submission wins. Variations of this contest model include creating a drawing instead of a snapping a photo, create a video or to simply post a short 100 word story.

A more aboveboard variation is to ask fans to snap photos with your product and use them as their product picture in addition to posting the picture to your Fan page. This is the model that Dunkin Donuts used to promote awareness of a new product. This variation requires participants to change one of their most public Facebook profile elements, so you should be sure that your incentive is attractive enough.

For best results, ask participants to name and caption their photo specifically (e.g. “Contest Name Entry”) so that their friends are aware of the contest. Also, encourage your Fans to get their friends to vote on their entry by Liking their picture or video.

Exclusive Contest Rules

This is a really simple way to grow your fan base, but requires a little knowledge of HTML. Create a new tab with the Static FBML application and hide the contest rules within that tab with the tag. To see the contest rules, visitors my Like the page first. John Haydon explains how to do this on his blog with a cool video.

To be successful with this contest model, you must clearly specify the benefit to your page visitors, i.e. tell them what they stand to win. You may also want to provide an instant benefit for becoming a Fan, such as a video tip or discount coupon as an added incentive for Liking your page.

Suggest An Idea

Papa John’s recently launched a contest with this model, asking Fans to create a new Pizza for their menu. While they used a fancy Facebook app, you can simply write a note asking for suggestions for your product, tagline, or even testimonials and ask Fans to provide ideas in the comments. Best comment wins, sweet and simple.

Tag Yourself

In this contest model, you upload a photo album of your products to your Fan page. Ask your Fans to tag their name to a product to win that product. To maximise this contest model, upload 1 picture every few days to encourage Fans to keep returning to your page. This is the same contest idea which IKEA used in a wildly successful contest. As an alternative, ask Fans to post a review or testimonial of your product in the photo comments.

Success Factors

You can increase the success rate of your Facebook contest by keeping the following in mind:

1. Make use of the viral news feed effect. All the contest ideas above rely on using the News Feed to spread the contest further. The idea is to include some sort of Facebook interaction (comment, like, photo upload, etc) into the contest. This interaction will show on your Fans’ news feeds, driving awareness among their friends.

2. Keep contests simple. Understand Facebook user psychology – people visit Facebook to play games and connect with friends by viewing photos, poking friends, etc. Your contest needs to be quick and easy to complete. Remember that your main goal is to gain Fans, not marketing data, branding, etc.

3. Provide an incentive. The better the incentive, the more participation you’ll get in your contests.

Take Note of Facebook’s Promotional Guidelines

Technically, some of the contest ideas above violate Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines (I think). Facebook says that you can only administer promotions through an application, and that the promotion can only take place on a canvas page of a Facebook app and on an application box in a tab in a Page. Facebook also says that “you will not condition entry to the promotion upon taking any action on Facebook, for example, updating a status, posting on a profile or Page, or uploading a photo. You may, however, condition entry to the promotion upon becoming a fan of a Page”. Read more.

However, I think that the guidelines above apply to larger brands with big budgets and not so much to small businesses who are the target audience of this article. In any case, be aware that you may be in violation of Facebook’s guidelines and be ready to shut down your contest immediately if you receive a warning from Facebook.

If you have the budget, you could always use 3rd party promotion applications like Wildfire to run your contests rather than building your own.

Other Resources

• 5 Contest Strategies That Will Skyrocket Your Facebook Fan Base
• How To Get More Facebook Fans – Some Basic, Proven Ideas

Please share your own ideas

There you have it, here are the ideas and contest mechanics I use myself. I will be constantly adding new ones to this list. If you have any to add, please share them in the comments and I’ll be happy to link to your website or blog.

Facebook Contest Ideas to Grow Your Fan Pages – originally published on Buzzmedia Online Marketing

What is social media’s role in marketing? Many marketers and business owners find social media difficult to grasp. They may know they need to start using it, but failure to understand of it’s role in the marketing process lead to wrong tactics which just annoys social media users.

For example, some marketers simply blast out spammy messages through Twitter, Facebook groups and blog comments. I don’t know about you, but that pisses the heck out of me.

In my opinion, social media helps make your brand human and turns your marketing into relationships. Let me try to explain.

When early merchants started trading goods, they did so in public venues like souqs, bazaars and markets. They would have nurtured relationships and trust among their customers to ensure a good reputation and positive word of mouth, the main marketing vehicle way back when. They did this by listening to their customers, providing quality products and services, and actually caring – in short, they had to be human.

Fast forward to the industrial revolution and merchants, now known as businesses and brands, had a more effective way of reaching their customers: mass media. Through TV advertising, brands could reach millions and that was much more efficient than selling to a handful of people at a time in the market.

However, after decades of mass media advertising, businesses started to lose touch with their consumers. Businesses replaced building relationships with customers with branding – a poor substitute if you ask me. I have a feeling that many marketers today are more comfortable talking to an advertising agency or using automated spamming tools, rather than having a deep conversation with their customer.

In this case, the business is no longer human. It becomes a wall of light and sound, and consumers can’t form relationships with walls.

Social media offers brands a chance to be human again. It’s not practical to expect every company to have a personal relationship with each customer, but social media can help make that process more efficient. At the very least, social media allows businesses to listen to what their customers are saying, supporting customers and providing access to the people within the company.

Social media helps brands be human. We’re back to the merchant in the market again. One-on-one again, but amplified with social media tools.

Some brands recognise this and have begun to talk, joke, share stories with me in my favourite hang out spots like Facebook and Twitter. Some brands even have their employees dropping by blogs.

It’s not that difficult. If Tony Fernandes can do it, now everyone can use social media (geddit??).

Here are some action steps for you. What are some of the ways your company listens to your customers? (Hint: focus groups don’t count). When’s the last time you actually had a none sales-related conversation with your customers? How can you use social media to connect and increase your relationship-building effectiveness?

Please leave a comment below or share this post with your friends. This is just my own opinion, so I’d love to hear your thoughts, and am happy to share more if you’d like.

Photo credits

Huế market by Jaako
Wall of TVs by GabeB

The role of social media in marketing: It makes your brand human – originally published on Buzzmedia Online Marketing

Facebook has recently surpassed Google as the most visited website in the US according to Hitwise. It’s a trend that the rest of the world will soon follow and yet, many businesses and marketers are still obsessed about their search ranking when they should seriously start to consider a Facebook strategy.

Social networking is changing the web, so businesses and marketers have to change their online marketing tactics along with it. This change isn’t only confined to the US – the stats appear to say the same thing for Malaysia (Alexa’s Top Sites for Malaysia).

At this rate, having a presence on Facebook is as important as having an email address. If you have never considered Facebook as part of your marketing strategy, here are some steps to take:

1. Stop thinking that Facebook is “just for personal use”. Recognise Facebook for what it really is – a marketplace that connects consumers and businesses on a personal, one-to-one level. Start using Facebook for your online marketing and you’ll begin to realize its potential.

2. Create a Facebook Fan Page for your Business. Once you’ve launched the Page, you must engage your Fans regularly, preferably daily. Share useful information that’s aimed at selling, but aimed at growing trust and social capital. See the Buzzmedia Facebook Page and be a fan to get online marketing tips.

3. Ask your employees for advice. Chances are, many of your employees are already on Facebook. These employees will be your company’s brand ambassadors on Facebook. Ask them for ideas and examples of other brands who are doing well on Facebook.

In conclusion, I urge you to take a more holistic view to your online marketing. SEO today isn’t enough anymore, and you must supplement it with a social strategy. Because of it’s size and reach, Facebook needs to play an important role in your social strategy and overall online marketing.

I am currently developing a free Facebook Pages guide that will show you how to use Fan Pages to market your product and services on Facebook. Click here to sign up to be notified when the guide is ready.

P.S. Lim Yung-Hui did some excellent research to compile statistics of Asian Facebook users. He found that 30% of all internet users in Malaysia use Facebook. You should follow Lim on Twitter – twitter.com/zhiQ

Dude, you’re still obsessed about SEO? Wake up and smell the Facebook – originally published on Buzzmedia Online Marketing