10 eMedia Tips for Marketers

. . . based on the most visible trends in online marketing – consumer and B2B

(Adapted from a webinar for Meister Media Worldwide advertisers)

The future of online marketing is wide open but is undisputed, and enough dust has settled in business-to-business markets to see what really works. Here are our top 10 emedia tips for B2B marketers interested in crafting highly effective campaigns for horticultural and agricultural markets. 

#1. Horticultural and agricultural audiences are now online or will be very soon.

A threshold has been passed: broadband use has reached a majority for rural households with an income of $50,000+. The higher the income, the higher the incidence of broadband: nearly 80% among rural incomes of $150,000+. With the FCC urging faster, wider broadband Internet access (March 2010) and the Internet becoming commonplace, the trend line will only continue to go up.

#2. eMedia has an accessible price point – and a nice ROI.

Respondents to a FOLIO: magazine survey on why clients buy emedia (May 2009) identified seven reasons: ROI/measurability/deeper business intelligence, lead generation, accessible price point, ability to interact with prospects, drive traffic to websites, interactive capabilities, and multimedia capabilities. Conducting apples-to-apples comparisons of print, enewsletters and web using traditional cost-per-impression formulas (see below) often shows emedia to be highly competitive.

#3. eMedia and Print work well together.

Print magazines drive awareness. eMail and websites drive action – clicks to websites, registrations, etc. A cross-platform pull creates market torque, with the total effect exceeding the sum of the parts.

#4. A webinar is a full campaign – not a one-off event. 

Webinars – live, then on-demand for three months afterwards – bring plenty of benefits in and of themselves including an engaging platform, quality time spent (an average of 45 minutes), and measurable ROI via detailed reporting. But a full webinar campaign can produce tens of thousands – if not hundreds of thousands – of impressions through pre- and post-webinar print ads, print articles, eblasts, enews ads, enews articles, and website banners. At a typical sponsorship fee (often starting at $9500), a webinar can generate a cost per impression as low as $.20 and an email lead for an industry-standard cost of about $30.

#5. Clicks are at best a partial test of a campaign’s success. 

Campaigns geared to generating awareness tend to emphasize impressions. Campaigns designed to drive action focus on clicks. It’s best to clarify expectations upfront. The click-through rate of a campaign should be viewed in the context of the industry average of .1 to .2%. About two-thirds of web users don’t click ads at all. Many others receive an impression and eventually initiate a “delayed click” – e.g., searching for the product brand or company or typing a URL directly into a browser, then making a later, untracked visit to an advertiser’s site. Bottom line: Impressions still are very important, and your website may be receiving more traffic from ads than is immediately measurable.

#6. Ad creative matters – unit size and content. 

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, medium rectangles attract the highest click-through rate of any ad unit (.37%), followed by leaderboards, skyscrapers, wide skyscrapers, and horizontal banners. These numbers are not absolute, though, and can vary greatly by site. Ask a sales rep or ad-ops person which units tend to perform best on a particular site. Among design considerations, using a billboard approach to graphics and always including a distinct call to action (e.g., “Watch,” “Order”) have become best practices. Adding animation and video increases the odds of drawing clicks.

#7. Position an incentive and a funnel on the other side of the click. 

As in trade show marketing and direct mail, online marketers should provide incentives for viewers to click and register – e.g., technical/white papers, informational webinars, calculators, coupons and discounts, a call from a sales or tech rep, etc. And be sure to be set up to capture at least an email address, which enables you to follow-up and potentially pick up more demographic information in increasing increments (name, title, company) using “progressive profiling.”

#8. Everything can and will be measured. 

Any emedia campaign should generate, at a minimum, ongoing reports of how ads are performing in terms of impressions and click-through rates. Armed with this information, marketers can analyze performance, evaluate it in the context of industry standards, and optimize the campaign through changes in ad content, unit size and location, ease of registration, etc.

#9. Online video is in every marketer’s future. 

The number of online videos viewed more than doubled from December 2008 to December 2009 and has surpassed 33 billion. Significant viewer growth is happening in the “long tail” – on smaller websites with far less traffic than video giants YouTube and Hulu. Video advertising is projected to be the fastest-growing online ad segment through at least 2014, with B2B a key part of the growth rate: Video-site traffic has increased the most among viewers age 30 to 49, with viewership of product-based videos on the web increasing 40% since 2007.

#10. Video/audio may be more accessible than you think. 

Video is best when it engages, demonstrates and entertains, often requiring little more than a solid video camera and knowledgeable expert who is comfortable in front of it. Custom-produced video can be time-intensive and is charged by the hour but it can have long legs: posted on advertiser and media websites, played on TVs at tradeshows, and distributed through sales reps. Develop a script and target a length of no more than 3-4 minutes. Pre-roll ads account for 95% of all online video advertising, with a length of :15 showing the best completion rate. There are many options in online video, but the key is to use banner ads and email to drive a higher number of total views.