Just caught up with Sean Rach, Prudential Corporation Asia’s Director of Media & Corporate Events over email (with help and prompted by their PR agency Burson Marsteller)

Discussions started with the fact that Prudential had launched an iPhone application on retirement planning- the first insurance company in Asia to launch a mobile phone application as a marketing platform.

I found the concept interesting- specially with the perspective that it is a first in the industry, though I’d say the real deal will be how the concept is extended and moves forward.  Media is where people attention shifts to- and marketers need to quickly adopt their marketing to fit the new tools.

Alongside, think I need to migrate quickly to the voice/video based Brainstorms as they allow for taking a more conversational approach and a more dialogue based interaction- but here it is- perspectives from Sean on his (and Prudential’s) viewpoint towards Digital Media:

What are the key challenges to the insurance industry today and how can the digital medium help mitigate those challenges?

In keeping with our brand credo – - “Always Listening, Always Understanding” – - we understand that consumers and our customers are using digital media everyday in many ways. We are exploring ways that we can appropriately reach out to prospects, as well as, serve our customers through our digital platforms. As we have a very large agent network, digital media is becoming key in providing our agents with the latest customer information, product details, and training.

Could you elaborate on why and how the idea of the ‘Retirement calculator’ iPhone app was conceived? What exactly are the main points it is trying to address and how has the audience reaction been till now? There are many insurance calculators/retirement planning tools on the internet- could you elaborate what is special about migrating an app like this to the mobile web? (going beyond the fantastic point that it is a first in Asia)

Background and key points

The “What’s Your Number?” Retirement Calculator is an evolution of PCA’s existing – and very successful – “What’s Your Number?” retirement campaign, which was established to address growing retirement protection needs across Asia.  Prudential is committed to helping people understand that careful planning is critical for a carefree retirement – people need to understand what their retirement goal should be and how to get there.

Migration to mobile

Seeking to reach people via mobile is natural given the penetration and usage of mobile phones in Asia – in most markets much more than the penetration of the internet. Mobile marketing via SMS is a very common and effective way of reaching out to prospects, customers and even our agents.

We developed this application as a “branded utility”, which aims to drive greater awareness and understanding about the importance of retirement planning. Taking learnings from our web-based calculators, we have sought to create an intuitive way to determine your “retirement number” – the first step to effective retirement planning.

In testing, we found that by placing this calculator in their hands, we allow users to determine a range of scenarios that they might consider. This is the power of mobile – the most personal form of media.

Audience reaction

As we have recently launched the application, we are receiving comments on a daily basis. Most users find it very user friendly and surprisingly comprehensive. It has been noted that it has started conversations among family members and increased the realization that a retirement plan is needed.

What are some of the other ways in which you are using the digital medium for marketing purposes? (It could be anything related to branding awareness, customer engagement, agent empowerment or closing sales) How do you measure success for these activities?

Prudential has for some time sought to leverage digital media. Whether with consumer websites, extranets, intranet, email newsletter, or sms, we recognize the opportunity to reach out and appropriately communicate using these media.

Measurement is key to any form of marketing, especially digital marketing in the financial services industry. We use a range of web and mobile analytics tools to monitor and optimize the success of our campaigns. Digital media, as the most measurable media platform, provides a valuable listening opportunity for Prudential.

What roles did your various agencies play in developing this app?

To develop this application, we worked with a team from both OgilvyOne and Cherrypicks.- – with OgilvyOne taking the creative lead and Cherrypicks leading the technical implementation.

What role do you think the various ‘types’ of agencies could play in the near future when it comes to digital marketing? Especially with respect to mobile marketing? Which of the existing agency ‘types’ is best suited for leadership in the digital space? (PR/creative/media/digital). Do you think there is a future for digital ‘specialist’ agencies?

This is a rather broad question.

Having led a leading digital and direct marketing agency for several years, I view your question in a slightly different way. Given consumer’s media consumption habits, I feel that the best marketing solutions come from understanding all the possible ways to reach and influence your desired audience. This may be through earned media (PR), paid media (advertising), word of mouth, direct marketing and the list goes on.

A truly integrated solution can be accomplished with one lead agency coordinating partners as there is no “one-stop shop” or with a selection of agency partners coordinated by the client.

Digital specialist agencies do offer a great deal of value in understanding the intricacies of how the various media options work, especially regarding mobile media. As digital is often technical, this understanding of capabilities can mute some of the ability to manage the interplay between media options. Thus, digital specialist agencies run the risk of pursuing ideas that fit their particular media versus ideas that can be integrated and brought to life across various media platforms.

From my point of view- this stands for all types of agencies- digital or non-digital. The non-digital ones have difficulty porting the concept to digital, and in many ways, vice-versa. Though in the not-so-distant future, both will do each other and everyone else’s jobs.

Think About It

Following up on my much earlier post on some practical uses of Augmented Reality for marketing, here is one on what it could look like in the future- have seen many around the same topic, but this one struck- and thought should share. If for nothing else, then for the pure eye candy and the ‘cool’ factor that marketers are mostly after.

The setting could be in your kitchen.

Enjoy.

In my about to be launched book- “Think About It”- Ideas shaping digital media and marketing in the new decade, I discuss something that is just one step behind Augmented Reality, and if used correctly, could really boost interactive marketing processes and adoption.

I have also mentioned in the past, that Augmented Reality is cool- though a technoolgy whose time was not there yet. I saw its adoption increasing from mid 2010 onwards- specifically in Asia.

AR is used across touchpoints now- like with printed codes, webcams and computers but to me the real coming of age would be interactive usability via camera enables mobile devices.

However, I see signs of Augmented Reality coming up faster than expected- with usage that is more practical than just ‘cool’.

Though when you see advertisers like Nike and Adidas using this technology, the ‘cool’ automatically associates.

I discuss some good campaigns around AR here:

Nike (via marketing interactive): This one is from Asia- Hong Kong.

Nike launched this programme (mcCann+hyperfactory) to target teenagers- for strengthening its soccer products.

For four weeks, Nike plastered a series of secret codes around Hong Kong, in Nike stores and at the Causeway Bay MTR station.

The codes invite users to download a mobile application that allows them to view its T90 soccer boots and ball in 3D through their mobile screens.

So this is simple- but an early entry into this market- makes it newsworthy and upholds the innovative/cool factor of Nike.

There are some other campaigns as listed bby Devora Rogers on iMediaconnection

Samsung:

This is a simple, yet great use of Augmented reality and we could see more such stuff in the near future.

Samsung’s AR execution, which helps consumers figure out what a TV will look like on the wall, before they hang it. Users print out an image that they then show to their webcam, which faces the wall on which they want to hang the TV. The screen recognizes the AR trigger, and instead of seeing the printout, users see a TV laid over their wall through their screen.

With these examples, this technology seems perfectly well suited for home improvement and decoration industries- but the potential goes much further than that.

Home Depot:

This US retail giant has reinvented the humble gift cards.

Simply put, when you receive a gift card, displaying it in front of a webcam enables users to browse and buy products online or plan for their next project.

Here’s more- in video:

Ray Ban:

Another really cool yet practical usage by Ray Ban.

Rayban Virtual Mirror application demonstration. Using key points on your face the app maps pairs of augmented reality shades onto your face. Then you can click straight through to the store.

Ordinary people:

Well you could use this on your resume or on your business cards. Imagination is the only limitation here. Of course being a bit flamboyant helps

The real coming of age of this technology will be when it is more end user focused rather than being inward focused.

Think About It

Shalabh

Welcome to 2010. The year when Social Networks get into early adulthood- and get married. To whom? The real world. FTW for sure. And sure enough- the best man will be the mobile device.

I don’t say this to promote Augmented reality. That I’ve already discounted. No- not given up (I think it is pretty cool) just time shifted- not for the next 6 months in 2010.

Why do I say so? Listen up:

• Facebook has more than 65 million members accessing it using mobile.
• 20 percent of Twitter streams originate from mobile devices
• In 2009, YouTube video watching through mobiles was up 52 percent-  according to a study published in May by Nielsen.

These three social networks- pretty much rule the web world- and they are slowly but surely being mobility driven. Mobile is the BFF of Social Networking. But there’s one marriage that is long being awaited. That between the real and the virtual world. Tying the knot between real life interaction and virtual (mobile +web) presence.

In late 2007, while being on a panel at GSMA in Macau, one of the things I had felt and brought up was that location awareness could give a great boost to mobile marketing. Though many marketers did not have a great degree of success at the time (with limited bluetooth and SMS campaigns), I always had this hunch that the one obvious advantage of mobile over others is – ahem-mobility. And we finally see it happening now- with the convergence of Social and real life (location) and Mobile.

While Twitter plans to incorporate location based features soon; applications like Google Latitude and Loopt are already in this direction. The ability to connect with ‘friends’ based on location hyper targeting coupled with other triggers is a ‘no- brainer’ path that will be taken soon by many others.

Marketing dollars will aid the growth of such services- we the marketers are hungry for these things. Forever. Ah! The pain of dealing with yet another technology and yet another platform.

See again- I said ‘marketing’ and not just ‘advertising’. Though advertising is the obvious beneficiary as well.

Ad Networks like AdMob are already cashing in to the opportunity (and I don’t mean the Google way) by offering location based ads.

But speaking of marketing, services like Foursquare have been making waves (and I promise you the buzz around this service will almost be as much as Twitter had from 2007-2009 the next year onwards).

Of course you know Foursquare- don’t you? a location-aware app that lets users “check in” at venues in a number of cities. The opportunities for footfalls are immense. You could do coupons (opt-ins of course) to subscribers within a certain radius of a location (say restaurant or boutique); or you could run loyalty rewards for frequent patrons (called Mayors for some funny reason)

Foursquare is not alone. I struggle to find Asian examples (trust me they will pop up within a month or two of this post) but there are other popular ones like Rummble (an interesting story of already brewing competition here) and Gowalla.

Rummble

Gowalla

Update on 7th feb 2010:

Just received a mail from Placepop about their offering too. In case you want to take them for a spin- you could try them free at the iTunes store

This is of course, not all. And there are at least a few solid Asian examples after all.

We saw Friendster acquisition by MoL, a company that will probably use the social network’s remaining audience base to promote m-commerce, micropayment led social gaming and what not.

Alongside, in October 2009, mobile manufacturer Ericsson tied up with Kaixin001. The deal was to incorporate more social activities to the handset and ease of access.

All said and done- Mr Real World- it is time to say “I do” to Lady Social Network. The best man “Mr Mobile” will keep a close watch.

I think American companies are using the web more effectively than anyone else. Not only in ‘paid’ promos but otherwise as well. And while that is not a huge surprise, it reinforces itself when you get contacted by an American company talking about their products to you as a blogger.

What has also happened in the new business world order is that companies now could produce products for a worldwide audience- though some are more suited for that than others. The first thing that comes to mind while talking about ‘global audience’, is something that is mass and B2C. However, some companies have taken the initiative and have created products that could be used by a more niche audience.

I have covered Grasshopper earlier and now I present to you this software called Billing Boss.

Invoicing for small business- Billing Boss

Marketing a globally valid product has its own challeneges- and this is what Sage- the company behind Billing Boss seems to be doing very well. To me Marketing is Business and Business is Marketing.

Disclosure: This post is not paid-for by any means or form. They happened to write in to me explaining their product details, and I’m covering them because many readers seem to be start ups or independent/freelance professionals. I think the product is interesting. I have tested it once though to understand the features and not real life. Though I intend to use it – and will probably write more about it when I do.

This helps the readers and me in getting to try out a free service. This helps them- this blog is amongst limited pool of blogs with Page Rank 4, with 250 odd regular RSS readers and about 2k visitors per month.  And of course I love writing about new services or good ideas. Everyone wins.

Billing Boss is a free online invoicing tool designed specifically for businesses to create and track their invoices.

It is designed specifically for the needs of small businesses and freelancers, from start-ups to midsize organizations. Something that could be used across categories. Not made for any specific kind of business, though.

And they are using Social Media quite efficiently. Not only by pitching their services to influencers but also creating ‘assets’ for them to use . Like this demo video- where a journalist or blogger could just grab the code and embed in their posts.

It is a simple system. From an Application/programming perspective. But what makes it different- is the user experience and features that the web 2.0 audience expect out of just about any site.

Some interesting features are:

• The ability to export and import contacts
• Save and view invoicing history
• Data regarding usage in the reports section

The site is mobile optimized and can be used on the Iphone and GPhone as well. You could even share data with your chosen participants (a la google docs)

The product has multi language support apart from English- with Asian languages like : Korean, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Japanese. I could also see Hindi and Gujarati which was a major surprise. Gujarati is spoken by a small minority in India though the Gujarati community is fiercely entrepreneurial and are traditionally very savvy business people.Makes sense.

With multi language, there is also multiple currency feature (including SGD) but that seems to be more cosmetic than doing something dynamic (like converting local currencies into USD for example)

They mention on their site “Where we will make money is when we solve harder problems for you” leading me to believe they might have a freemium product but they clarified otherwise.

But I could see that they seem to have payment processing services on the site- and their ultimate aim might be to migrate some users on to that. It is not necessary to use those services- you could use your PayPal account in case you wanted to receive payments online.

So that’s about it- go ahead and use them- and get talking.

Take a look at this cool new technology, demonstrated by MIT grad student David Merrill. They call it Siftables. The demo is quite something. Although limited in its present shape and form- could be the future of interactive learning.

Wild imagination could point to a little similarity with Yahoo Pipes structure in the way you could create different units interact with each other (some people could kill me for this- but the hardcore pipes users can identify)- though obviously a very different app and use (and even scale).

Enjoy!

Hat tip: @JayOatway

OK this post comes after a two week hiatus- and somewhat deliberately so- last 30 days were the holiday and annual leave clearing days for most people. Less traffic overall on the web. No point singing on a stage when there are no listeners right?

Alongside, been busy putting together some stuff – ask me and I’ll tell you what it is. That took a whole lot of time. But promise- from now onwards- a volley of posts coming your way. Shit! Chinese New Year coming up- one more week of traffic dip from Singapore and South East Asia. Never mind. Life goes on.

So if you’ve seen the first part of this post, I had decided to give a ‘different’ perspective on choosing a gadget on “likeability” by the public. There are rational and comparison/reviews all over the web- but this post covers preferences at the emotional/perceptual level.

A summary here- in case you are feeling lazy to click or hard pressed for time (deciding on hong baos and what restaurants to choose for reunions) or have 990 tabs open in your browser already:

======================================================

There will be three parts to this post about likeable laptops for Small Medium Businesses:

• The first post sets a base- on the brands and models in my consideration set. I give out some links to you to see the models yourself, in case you want to take a look. I evaluated two ends of the spectrum that could be used by a small business owner or a business executive to make a decision- both with different priorities

• The second post will evaluate the perception around these brands- what do people think of when it comes to these computer brands- and hence what do they think of you when you are seen with these brands. The analysis will go beyond the technical and cost-benefit aspects- which are aplenty.
• And then maybe, if need be, seal it with a third post summarizing the above

=========================================================

It seems a third post might not be necessary. But without much further ado- let me come to the second part. Evaluating the perception of these laptop brands- using perception of public. Some of the readers, like Su Min (You smart gurl… you)- had suggested me to use a tool- and incidentally that is exactly what I had in mind as well.

So Yes- It is a tool-Leveraging on the wisdom of crowds- called BrandTags;. Now by now, you might have known I’m like- a tool junkie. I love good, innovative and useful tools, specially web based. Actually anything new and innovative cacthes my attention. And I do try to promote the tool/concept/people/company is as much micro capacity as I can.

Here it is:

Brand Tags: A collective experiment in brand perception. All tags are generated by people like you.

What this does is that it asks people one simple question- What do you think of first when you see this brand name?

The results are a string/ word cloud of terms that people think of. As you can imagine, some words are more popular and some others are much limited to a limited few’s imagination. If you plot them on a graph, should get something like a big head long tail type plot.

Huge in numbers- so will concentrate on the big head of perceptual analysis of people towards the brand:

Before we start- here is what I did- I took the top 30 attributes/words- and categorized them into positive, negative and neutral

HP:

printer    printers computer computers    print    crap    pc    laptop    invent    hp    boring    old    ink   cheap    hewlett packard    reliable    quality    blue    broken    shit    technology    carly    calculator   sucks    compaq    expensive    paper    corporate    printing    solid

Interestingly, for this brand, looking at the size of the words, people seem to be divided almost equally between exclusive attributes like cheap and expensive. Now you could argue that cheap has different meanings and a product can be cheap as well expensive together, but we will leave it at that. I have used cheap as a positive attribute. You may differ, but I’d prefer the cheaper branded notebook (ceteris paribus) for sure.

Final Score for HP:

• 18 neutral: 60% (defining product attributes- like computer)
• 7 negative : 23.3%
• 5 positives: 16.7%

• Positives in top 10 by size: 1
• Negatives in top 10 by size: 1

Dell:

computer    computers    cheap    pc    crap    dude    laptop    boring    hell    shit    dull    old    dell    broken    junk    laptops    expensive    reliable    notebook    michael    india    quality    sucks    bad service    cheap computers    custom    corporate    crappy    lame    online

Final score for Dell:

• 12 neutral: 40% (classified “dude” and “online” and “india”as neutral. Whew!)
• 13 negative: 43.3% !
• 5 positive: (I have chosen “quality” and “custom” as positive attributes

• Positives in top 10 by size: 1
• Negatives in top 10 by size:4

Lenovo:

This was funny in a way! Most people mentioned words like “what?” “Huh?” “Who?”- signifying that the brand still has to cut it in western countries- seems olympics brought them some association. And IBM still figures as the top thing when people think of Lenovo.

ibm    ?    computer    laptop    china    chinese    cheap    thinkpad    nothing    computers    crap    boring    notebook    no idea    pc    blue    what?    huh?    huh    laptops    lenovo    who?    business    new    what    tech    foreign    olympics    never heard of it    think pad

Final score for Lenovo:

• 13 neutral: 50% (I included “foreign” and “china” in this)
• 11 negative:36.7%
• 6 positive: 20% (included “new” and “cheap”)

• Positives in top 10 by size: 1
• Negatives in top 10 by size: 2

Samsung and Sony:

The perception of Samsung and Sony are too much of consumer electronics (TV/DVD etc) to make any reasonable conclusions. Leaving them out of here

Apple:

Ah! This would be cool to analyze- specially after my observation in the previous post. So here it goes:

Just like Dell, the bigger words intensity is quite high, but overwhelmingly positive attribution:

apple    mac    cool    ipod    design    computer    awesome    innovative    computers    innovation    expensive    creative    love    trendy    sleek    clean    steve jobs    white    quality    overpriced    pretentious    hip    simple    style    bite    best    iphone    cult    gay    apple computers

Final score for Apple:

• 10 neutral: 33.3% (Is “bite” -”positive”? OR “negative”? I marked “neutral” Ditto for ipod and iphone)
• 4 negative: 13.3% (Is “gay” negative? Sorry but I assumed in this context, it wasn’t flattering either)
• 16 positive:53.3% (Woah! What happened here? )

• Positives in top 10 by size:5 clear ones (cool, design, awesome, innovative, innovation!)
• Negatives in top 10 by size:0 (Thats Zero- nil-nada-zilch!)

Acer:

computer    cheap    computers    laptop    pc    ?    crap    laptops    notebook    taiwan    nothing    cheap computer    old    cheap computers    monitor    technology    huh?    boring    fast    no idea    what?    bandage    good    shit    acer    shoes    tennis    bad    ace    what

Final score for Acer:

• 9 neutral:30%
• 15 negative: 50% (I included any npn computer association as negative- people think of tennis and shoes- not exactly the brand space you’d like to be in when you sell computers)
• 6 positive: 20%

• Positives in top 10 by size:1 (Cheap)
• Negatives in top 10 by size:2

So there it is. You could do more- but this gets you an idea. There are people selling perception reports for over US 10k- so for free- this one’s not so bad :p

Net result is that Apple wins the perception game. HP has the maximum Neutral perception and Acer seems to have the maximum negative scoring.

Actually I think- this tool, along with a similar tool that could give an indicator of average Net Promoter Scores for these brands- used together could give a very nice insight into the likability of these brands. Could not find a similar tool for NPS though.

Notes (obviosuly you know these points, but for protocol sake):

• This is an ever changing word cloud- and the information here is over a few days of observation. But things change over time.
• This will not have a representative Asian persepctive- I am sure Asian representation is pretty less.
• The negatives, postives and neutrals are my assessment. No scientific evidence that when people mention “corporate” – they mean it in positive or negative context. Is cheap positive or negative? I took as positive.
• Again, the tool just enlarges the words- but does not tell the number of people that have mentioned these attributes. So the percentages are skewed. However, in some cases, the mentions were overwhelmingly high and in those cases, the scoring would work

thumbnail: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bekathwia/2414194397/sizes/s/

If you are a small business, many a times you might have faced this issue of tracking the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns. Now, the biggies can afford to use DoubleClick, Eyeblaster or any of those expensive ad serving companies, but really, most SMEs cannot. And frankly, for many marketing campaigns, they need not. Not after you have used this tool.

If you do initiate some online campaigns to promote your stuff, but are concerned about tracking the effectiveness of those campaigns- specially, say, email marketing campaigns, conversions from any link building exchange initiatives you might have done, or even adding extra tracking layer for SEM campaigns- worry no more. You can use this basic, simple, yet effective campaign tracking tool. And I’ll tell you what- if you want, and are creative about it, you can even track your offline (physical) marketing campaigns.

Interested? Read on. One caveat though. This works if you use Google Analytics (GA) as your web analytics tool. Not too much of a problem I presume- as GA is free and going by the success of it, it is likely that you’d be using this any which ways. In case you do not, I recommend that you do. (No- not getting paid to say this).

To access the tool, click on the link: ChasingTheStorm campaign tracking tool

It is a Google Docs spreadsheet- so you can log in using your Google ID, export the sheet in excel or spreadsheet, follow some simple instructions- and there you go.

What are the ways you can use this (there could be many ingenious uses that you can use this for- just a few that I use them for):

• You could insert it as links in your email newsletter- and track not only one link- but use to track what call to action drives most traffic to your website
  If you track conversions, you could attribute this to conversions as well
• You could use this to update your status messages on your social network- and track people coming to the site from your social network
• You could even use it in your offline campaign- use URL shortening using a web service- and put the URL in your offline DM or newspaper classifieds ad. Track how many people visit your website after seeing this ad. Cool eh?
• Any other uses that you could think of? Use the tool and let me know some other uses or suggest me changes, if any

Understanding the working:

GA can track campaigns by identifying variables associated with that campaign. These variables are assigned by you- to generate a unique “identifier” hyperlink and help to understand the source of clicks to your website.

For example, if you include links to your website in an email newsletter, you can attach variables at the end of each link. When a user clicks on a link, your reports will show you on which link he clicked, as well as which newsletter contained that link.

Properly tagging your links will ensure that your reports include useful information about your marketing efforts.

When you click on the link above, you will get a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is all you need to generate bulk tags for tracking your marketing campaigns. In the spreadsheet tool, I have explained with examples from ChasingTheStorm campaigns. You can delete the data except that in the last cell (redirect URL) and generate your own tag.

I have just formalized the tool, though details can be found at Google Learning Center. Some parts are explained very well there, hence I have picked some parts, and simplified others to make it more understandable.

Essentially the tag is generated basis some variables that you- the marketer inputs. There are 5 campaign variables that you need to understand(and one URL cell):

• Name (What is termed as “campaign” in the sheet)
• Source
• Medium
• Content
• Term

• Name/campaign : With this variable you can track the different advertising campaigns or product promotions that your business creates. I have mentioned this as Campaign in the sheet- is more explicit. AdWords also allows auto tagging, where this field refers the name given to the originating AdWords Campaign.

• Source : Visitors to your website must come from somewhere. That is, each referral to a website has an origin, or Source . Examples of sources are the Google search engine, an email newsletter, or a referring web site. There may be several Sources for each campaign. For example, the “5 star Hotel in Singapore” is advertised in both an email newsletter and a banner ad. In this case, both “newsletter” and “banner ad” would be possible Sources. For AdWords auto-tagged accounts, the Source variable could be “Google”. I have, in my example, used some publications which I write for and hence you will see names like “thinking aloud” and “Community 2.0″ for source.

• Medium : Medium gives depth to the source, and helps to ‘qualify’ it. Together, the Source and Medium provide specific information about the origin of a referral. For example, if the Source is “Google,” the medium might be “CPC,” indicating a sponsored link. In the case of a “newsletter” Source, examples of Medium can be  “email” For AdWords auto-tagged accounts, the medium variable is “CPC.” In my example, I usedan identifier according to the content eg “twitterlink” – when I view the report, it could give me a snapshot indication (eg ThnkingAloud Twitterlink= 1000 visits)

• Content : The Content variable indicates which version of an ad on which a visitor clicked. Labeling your content versions allows you to determine which one is most effective at attracting profitable leads. For example, if you had two versions of a banner ad, you could use the Content variable to identify which one is bringing more visits to your site. For AdWords auto-tagged accounts, the Content variable is the first line of the originating advertisement’s ad text.

Some people could argue that I could have used ‘content’ and ‘medium’ interchangeably. Well, it helped me understand reports better- though you are free to follow convention. And frankly, the lines blur somewhere, so you could use according to the reporting structure you prefer. For me, practical supersedes theory.

• Term : I placed three links in my article and defined them by their names/terms. While using this for an adwords camaign, you could use this as the keyword that a user could type in.  For example, a link in a cost-per-click (CPC) ad would be tagged with the Term that triggered the ad.

How to view reports in GA:

There are several reports that allow you to view traffic from tagged initiatives (links which you have tagged with campaign variables).

1) On the left hand side, go to “Traffic Sources” report > Traffic Sources section.  It shows all the traffic that comes to your site including traffic from tagged links.

By default, it sorts the traffic by Source and Medium together, but you can use the ‘Show’ pulldown menu to organize the traffic by Source or Medium. Your tagged sources and mediums will be included in this list.

2) Traffic sources > Ad version :To see your traffic sorted according to Content

3) Traffic sources > campaigns report. To see your tagged campaigns. This report will typically list your AdWords campaigns, your tagged campaigns, and “(not set)” traffic that is not associated with any campaign.

So there it is. Do let me know if you used this tool or you found this tool effective, or any tips if you’d like to suggest to improve this tool.

Cheers!

thumbnail courtsey: http://www.addletters.com/index.php
Disclaimer: I, or ChasingTheStorm.com do not claim any liability for this tool. Please use at your own discretion.

In my profession, I meet a whole lot of people from various companies. That exposes me to an eclectic variety of business cards of people from all walks of life.

I recently started attending many conferences as the editor of this blogzine. That has made me interact with bloggers, consultants, podcasters et al. Of course I attended these conferences earlier, but as a Senior professional from the industry, I guess you meet a different crowd (and NO- I am not as old as I sound saying this. Had to clarify ) than when you represent a blogzine. Some of these guys have cool business cards.  However, I noticed, many of them might have spent a bomb getting them printed. And unless you know someone in the creative printing or advertising or any such business- best of luck with explaining your concepts to the mom and pop neighborhood printing shop.

That got me thinking- home based (and part time) businesses have this powerful tool at their disposal- the business card! Most of us do not put a whole lot of effort into business cards. But I will tell you what- the time spent on designing that business card will reap you rewards for times to come, and will probably be the most important fundamental marketing exercise that you can undertake.

It is a branding tool , a direct marketing tool and a CRM tool- all combined in one. And how much does it cost? Well, maybe $15 for a bunch of 100+ good quality (basic) business cards. And if you spend some time on it and be creative about it, the returns will far far exceed the time and money investment.

A business card is not just a paper card with your contact details and company logo- it is the attitude of your business. It should shout your personality out loud. When someone opens their card folders, it should scream- “look at me!” and when you give it to someone, they should raise their eyebrows and give you a second look. It should be an ice breaking tool and a conversation starter. A marketers delight and a sales warrior’s weaponry.

I made some new business cards for Chasing the storm. The brand personality can be gauged from here. But in short- CTS is about finding your own path, a brave attempt at doing something differently and looking beyond the obvious. I also wanted things a bit different- I wanted many different flavors of a business card. In effect, I wanted all (OK many) of my different cards to be different. Yet depicting the same attitude.

Here are four of them – I made 8 varieties in total (and they look way cooler on paper)

CTS Business card with an attitude 1

CTS Business card (How many legs?)

CTS business card- What do you see? Good or Evil?

CTS - One bus or two buses?

Imagine if I had asked my printer to print me not one bunch of similar looking cards, but a whole lot of different looking cards? He would’ve hung himself upside down and eat a dozen bananas before coming back to his senses.

How did I do it? Here is a simple (but VERY time taking- beware) process:
First- The preparation:

• • Photo paper with gloss or matt finish 9matt works better usually, but for bright colors you can use glossy finish) : Should cost about $8-$20 for a 20 sheet deck. Anything above 150 GSM thickness should do as per preference
  • A (photo) printer: Since a normal pronter might not have that impact, if you have a photo printer, yur card will shine through. A reasonably good photo printer could come at around $60+. They are dime a dozen nowadays- printer companies want to sell cartridges anyways.
  • A decent cutter: You could use a pencil like cutter- shaped like a small knife, used to cut, well- papers. It can start from $2 or so- and you need a scale to cut the paper. But I recommend spending a little bit more and get a “paper cutter” equipment. Will cost you about 15$ plus (till about 300$)- but you really need a basic no fancy cutter for this. One that can cut A4 size paper should do fine.

That’s it- you are on!

Second- creating the card on your computer:

You can very easily make this on MS word.

Step1
On MS Word Open the File menu and choose New.

Step2
Tools menu-> Envelopes and Labels section
Step3
Click Options.
Step4
By default Avery Standard is selected in the “Product type” menu, if not, select it
Step5
I chose “3612 – Business Card” in the “Product number” menu. Then clicked OK. You can choose to pick up a label – and a different size if you are adventurous.
Step6
Click “New Document”. You get a template with the correct margins for a business card.
Step7
Insert menu-> picture-> and browse your files for a picture or your logo to put on your card.
Step8
Adjust the graphic to the size you want. If you have a logo, insert that and align as per preference
Step9
Choose a font for the text and type your contact details
Step10
Instead of Copying and pasting a single design into each space on the page (recommended if you have one set), I tried something different and repeated the process for different cards that I wanted.
Step11
Select the table, right click and enable borders on the page so that they are visible once you print on the paper. Helps immensely when you are down to cutting yur masterpiece in the right dimensions
Step 12
Press Print on the toolbar when you’re ready to print

Simple! Eh?
There are softwares available on the web, some of them very cheap and good that can help you as well. Microsoft has some templates online, but they are run of the mill.
You can find other cool resources here

All in all, I’d say it was a damn time taking exercise, and not as cheap as having it made from a print shop. But the satisfaction it gave me was immense- and with probably the first optical illusion cards- all different from the other, I might as well be the first blogzine editor in the world doing it.

Like them? Let me know if you want to see more. Either which ways, what do you think of these?

The search monopoly of Google is threatened by new search engines. And they are not MSN or Yahoo or Baidu or whatever. As a matter of fact, they might not even be search engines. The best terminology to describe these new search platforms could be “search aggregators”. Of course they will not provide any search results on their own, but the ones that do provide search results now, might go in the background, like the olden days when you had the Inktomis and Googles of the world providing back end.

As more and more people are relying on folksonomy, blog authority searches, videos and photos and what not, they are also looking for solutions that could give them the search results from all these services in one go.

One good example is this- a service called keyboardr.com. Recommended to make a search on the site. Coolness. Watch the demo video here:

keyboardr.com from Julius Eckert on Vimeo.
Please give 5 seconds for video to load.

I know you would wonder what happened to semantic search? Well the thing with digital marketing agencies is that we hype up many things at the germination stage. So much so that by the time they are launched in the market, they already seem yesterday’s technology. Semantic search (and semantic web) in the true sense of the word, still has sometime before it hits your computer.

Till then, this is a more reasonable, scalable adn immediate option available to the surfers and the marketers alike.

What do you think?

Came across this cool tool on the web: Wordle

What does it do?

Give it your website address or paste a random paragraph from your blog – it arranges them in cool patterns and generates a word cloud for you.

In their words: “Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. “

Seems to have been created by a dude called Jonathan Feinberg (contact on site) and seems to very popular given the secondly updates (!) on the gallery

You can use either of these options to create a wordle:
(A)Enter the URL of any blog, blog feed, or any other web page that has an Atom or RSS feed.
(B)Paste in a bunch of text; OR
(C) Enter a del.icio.us user name to see their tags
Here’s one generated from my blog:

Shalabh Pandey

It can get a bit addictive after a while as you try to play with seemingly endless iterations. I noticed the cloud is slightly different from the one generated by WordPress for my blog- though wordle seems to give you choices of design and word arrangements- the larger instances of words are marked by bugger sizes.

Seems I have blogged a lot on search, asia and marketing, and prefer to use words like market, online, video, tips, media etc

There definitely is a ‘cool factor’ (more than anything else- even the makers dub it as ‘toy’).

But look more closely-it offers a simple yet great tool to engage the ‘active’ social beings on the Internet and thus offers a great enablement tool for them. Everyone can find a unique and fun way to use the tool- resulting in a viral snowballing effect-from influencers to ‘sneezers’ to ‘cautious adapters’. You can showcase on your blog, on your social networking site or just as an image on your messenger.

This simple tool, once measured in the context of behavioral theories like the Social Cognitive Theory assumes profound significance.  The theory identifies human behavior as an interaction of personal factors, behavior and the environment. Though the theory was developed much before the internet, its adaptation is very much relevant for the Internet as I am discovering. Social cognitive theory is helpful for understanding and predicting both individual and group behavior and identifying methods in which behavior can be modified or changed.

The success of many popular widgets and apps can be attributed to this theory. I might be the first one blogging about this theory, but more of this shpeel later.

For this particular tool, I’m not sure if the developers realize it, but this could be further developed into a cool marketing tool by brands in a million ways- with or without involvement of the site! (Now that’s not very pretty is it?)

Try it out and let me know if there are some interesting ones you spotted in the gallery- or are there any ways you think this can be used as a tool for any of the brands you are working on?