We live in uncertain times. Volatility in the market place caused by inflation, the mortgage crisis, and rising fuel prices have placed considerable downward pressure upon the average consumer. These factors have a direct impact on the bottom line of most businesses, and play a significant role in how marketers allocate their budgets. Now more than ever sales and marketing strategies must achieve the greatest reach and return on investment possible.

Print buys and traditional media spends require considerable investment and frequency to produce results. Not only are they expensive, but they typically limit engagement to direct pitches as opposed to two-way dialogues with customers. While metrics such as circulation, GRPs, and Nielsen ratings are good, they are hardly exact. Coupons, barcodes, and phone numbers can be put in place to track return on investment, but what if the amount of people that are actually seeing and using them is going down?

Everywhere you look these days you read headlines like:

Top 100 Advertisers Shifted $1 Billion To the Web Last Year At The Expense Of TV And Newspapers

Implosion: Newspapers Down 12.8% In 1Q

Auto Industry Revs Up Online Spending

Anheuser-Busch Looks To Slash Costs, But Not Marketing Spend

Major brands are shifting their marketing and advertising dollars to the web because, why?

• The Web is THE source for information and interaction.
• It represents the largest consolidation of customers with expendable income.
• You can reach customers at the point of making a purchasing decision.
• The online shopping experience is more valuable because of product comparisons, ratings, and feedback.
• You can engage your customer on a personal level and have meaningful dialogue that forms a positive relationship.
• The scale and extensibility of the Web, and web applications, is practically boundless.
• You can target campaigns based on niches, social networks, groups, keywords, customer type, and geography.
• Creative and messaging can be dynamic, interactive, and actionable.
• Companies are not bound by 3rd-party deadlines and campaigns can be launched quickly and cost-effectively.
• It is easy to append, shift,  and replace an online marketing campaign at any point in the cycle.
• The shelf life of a web page, blog post, video, or campaign is potentially limitless.
• And most important of all, you can Track, Measure, and Analyze everything.

Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research recently stated, “In the last recession, online spending cratered along with the rest of the advertising industry. But since interactive marketing programs are now fueled by measurable results, not dot-com madness, we believe that they can thrive in a recession.” Bernoff added, “Social applications in particular, such as communities and social networking sites, are cost-effective and have a measurable impact on prospects’ decisions in the consideration stage, which will be important to companies under recessionary pressures.”

Enter Social Media Marketing:

Businesses are increasingly realizing they can start a business blog, build out a YouTube channel, and join a few social networks for a fraction of the cost for a TV ad; and there is an audience. Joe Mandese, editor of MediaPost recently cited a study stating, “for adults 18-34 - social media now is the dominant form of personal communication media, with 85% of this influential demographic group relying on one or more Web 2.0 platforms to stay in touch with others.”

I guess you can call it Viral Marketing…if you want.

What has long been described as viral or buzz marketing is really the practice of getting customers to take action on a particular message by consuming it and passing it on. Because of the extensive reach of the web, a successful campaign can achieve tremendous success for your brand. But how does that relate to ROI? How much does a friend cost or a video view worth? The answer is, it depends. It depends on what you do with the relationship. Did you capture an email address from a sign up form? Did you overlay a link in your video that directed people to shopping cart for a particular product? Did it inspire enough motivation for someone to come down and test drive the latest model of car? Social marketing must consider all of these aspects and then some.

Some Words of Caution:

There is a right way and a wrong way to delve into the practice of social media marketing. If you do not have a clear strategy combined with a creative delivery your campaign will fail. People will not immediately eschew a social campaign because it is a business, but they will have higher expectations and be hyper critical. A few things to consider about a social marketing campaign:

• It must be clever, and it should resonate on a psychographic scale.
• It should be architected to persuade customers down a certain path but never force them.
• It should deliver on its promise.

As the Social Graph demonstrates, not only are you going where your customers already are, but you are giving them the means and the reasons to come back to interact with you. Done right, not only will it raise brand awareness, but it will also boost revenues by increasing direct and indirect web traffic.

Move Forward or Fall Back.

In an uncertain economic climate it is typical for many businesses to batten down the hatches and wait out the storm. They become conservative and unwilling to experiment. They worry that any marketing efforts will simply fall on deaf ears. These are legitimate concerns. Fortunately, the evolution of web applications, and our ability to get a message out quickly, cost-effectively, and with the right measurement tools in place means you don’t have to bind your hands with complacency. You can proactively get your message out and build your web base. Test, Tweak, Rinse and Repeat. Find the people that are searching for what you have to offer.

If you would like more information on social media marketing Click Here or Contact Us.

A few weeks back (Video, Video, Video) we spoke about the growing importance of video content on the web. One of the downsides of video though has been the time lock it puts on us. Sometimes it is far easier to read that four minutes of text and follow the pertinent links provided than it is to watch a video and then go and search for more information on topics brought up in the video.

Fear not! For finally, after over a decade of failed attempts, the hyperlinking technology we now take for granted in text is taking off as well in video. Think of a video for a Convention and Visitor Authority with pop-up links at key points which can send the viewer directly to a website to purchase tickets, view schedules or find more info about a particular attraction. Perhaps one for a ski resort with links to other videos about the ski patrol, or to a trail map, Flickr photoset, ticketing info, the food menus, pro shops and any other important or even just interesting bit of information.

Websites like Asterpix, Overlay.tv, QGIA and VideoCLix.tv are providing, or beginning to provide, simple web based services where you can upload footage or link to existing footage online and then create the the hyperlinks to other websites, enter details about items found in the video or any number of options, depending on the site’s formatting.

Similar results can be created with a custom look using Adobe Flash (though it is not the most efficient option for the job) or Riva Producer and other products are in development or even redevelopment in the case of software which was abandoned before the broadband and YouTube explosions.

There is a bit of a downside as the currently favored online video distribution sites (YouTube, Yahoo Video, MySpace…) can not handle hypervideo. The files therefore must be hosted through other means which does make it harder to get the content visible outside of the website it is hosted on. Possibilities could lie in distributing just the basic video in the attempt to garner interest in the actual hyperlinked video on the original site. Regardless of the difficulties, this is currently in it’s infancy and has the potential to change the way we browse and shop the web.

Twelve Horses plans to be on the forefront of this burgeoning technology. Added to our expanding video content creation abilities to write, produce, shoot, edit and distribute video content we are perfectly placed to take advantage of hypervideo and other techniques. Give us a call, and we can help you with your video needs.

-Earl

A few weeks ago I spotted this blog post on the Mozmonkey Blog about a mashup that could scan your Flickr feed for tags and post a link on your Twitter stream. I also noticed Twitpic a new Tumblr like photo blog that posts uploaded images to Flickr. Naturally, I was eager to merge my two favorite web apps.

If you have a cameraphone, smartphone or iPhone you probably have a data plan and are likely used to taking photos, text messaging and emailing from your mobile device. Chances are that those features tend to make work take over your life. At the same time tools like twitter and Flickr and the little camera in your phone let you steal back bits of your life and free time by letting you communicate, and interact with friends and acquaintances easily wherever you are.

We at Twelve Horses are also pretty big fans of Flickr for it’s great social / interactive features and it’s HUGE support in the development community. It has a lot of great features, and the more you dig the more useful they get. One I really like is the email to upload. This feature lets you send photos to your flickr stream by attaching them to an email. The subject line becomes the title and any body text becomes the description copy. You can also specify tags that get assigned to all emailed photos. I’ve used this feature to upload photos from bike races or various adventures on the fly and even forward them to my blog in order to have real-time remote blog-reporting.

So I got to thinking…

With Twitterfeed.com and the fact that you can’t post a picture of yourself swinging a dead cat on Flickr without hitting an rss feed, I set out to find a way to get ‘er done w/o learning php, changing business models or calculating billable efficiencies.

How to post photos to flickr and twitter from your mobile phone (or email)

Step One:

Set up email uploads to your Flickr account. You can also set up another email address that will post the photo and caption text to your blog as well. Have that email add a unique tag, like cameraphone, or dailyphoto, or mobilephoto to the pics that come through. Upload a photo, click on the tag and you have a photo stream of just those photos with that tag. Flickr gives you an rss feed for that tag gallery! Copy it and proceed to step two…

step two:

Set up Twitter feed with the rss feed you created in step one. Make sure you select the option to have the url added to the post so your Twitter friends can click on it and view your flickr stream. You can specify the posting frequency as well as the number of posts that twitterfeed posts up for you. 1 post per half hour should be fine for this purpose.

Step three:

Test the system. Best thing to do here is to to load up the most recent Cubeself photo and snap a goofy self-portrait and load it up!

We’re going to be using this feature when we go up to Alpine Meadows next weekend to meet up with Gizmodo and test out the new Nokia n95.

-Mike

In order to truly understand a brand it helps to experience it firsthand.

When we at Twelve Horses are not busy geeking out on the web, many of us here are charging hard somewhere in the outdoors. Whether it is around Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada range that rise above our Reno office, or the Wasatch Mountains that tower above our Salt Lake City location, a common means of experiencing these environs is on a pair of skis or a snowboard. Come visit us and you’ll find that the last powder day is a common conversation around the water cooler. Even as I type this blog post apres ski session, I am looking out across big, beautiful, snow-laced Lake Tahoe and looking forward to the next time.

This company culture is undoubtedly a major contributing factor as to why we service so many destination and sports marketing clients. Passion for these pursuits permeate our client work and online marketing endeavors such as brand building, web design and development, email and multi-channel marketing, social marketing, and search engine optimization. It works well because we are marketers and technologists that are a part of the target snow sport audience. 

When I came across this blog post titled, Seasonal SEO and Online Marketing for Ski Resorts, I couldn’t resist beating our own drum. Not only is it an informative and well-written post on online marketing for ski resorts, but it also touches upon one of our clients that we have serviced for more than 12 years - Heavenly Mountain Resort. It is a great compliment, but it also gives you a window into what we have been doing for them. Here is an excerpt.

Heavenly Resort in Lake Tahoe is perhaps the best example of a ski resort with an effective online marketing strategy. They are relatively well optimised for search and have good visibility in the search results. They have developed a MySpace profile and their website offers a range of initiatives including videos, daily podcasts and RSS feeds for their interactive blog, mountain condition updates and their own TV show.

Our work for Heavenly has also garnered several awards including a Web Award, ADDY, and California Travel & Tourism Award, and this success stems from a well-designed website that relies on the right online tools to reach and resonate with a global customer base. But I also believes that it comes from a deep and personal understanding of their brand.

See you on the hill!

tags: destination snow ski resort online marketing branding web design search engine optimization

With the proliferation of online video there is no question that it has become a preferred method for communicating a message. How many of you would prefer to spend 4 minutes watching a video as opposed to 4 minutes of reading straight text? {Except for this of course! ;~)}

We recognize the importance of it and are actively blending video into various social and interactive marketing campaigns for our clients; for example, websites, landing pages, mobile devices, and social networks like YouTube and Facebook.

This content can also be extended to sales teams to help illustrate a particular product, service, or the unique value of the company they represent. It can be used at a tradeshow, powerpoint presentaion, or live on your iPod for that perfect moment when it can compliment a particular point you are about to make.

It might even be something that serves to personalize your brand and communicate something a little deeper, as this video shows.

Well, now there is another way. Google recently announced they are beginning testing for video ads on search results pages. For now it is no more expensive than the usual CPC you would make. This marks a new means of delivering targeted, measurable messages in a rich format, and it is something you should consider as part of your SEM campaigns.

Let ‘em see it!

tags: video branding search engine online marketing

Quite a number of our clients use blogs for business to establish an online presence and publish informative and searchable content to the web. Of those blogs/websites, we always use Wordpress because of the flexibility for custom design and access to a seemingly endless array of community applications.  As powerful as Wordpress is, it is not always the easiest application to use for non-technical business owners and employees who want to provide more than just text and links. However, there is a solution.

Windows Live Writer is a free, downloadable desktop application that runs on your Windows PC and allows you to publish pictures, videos, and other rich content to your blog/website. There are also a number of useful free extensions available that you should check out if this is of interest to you.

As an example, I will use it to show you some recent blogs/websites that we have launched in the past week or so.

Here is an example of how you can use Windows Live Writer to create a table, format, insert pictures and links. No html knowledge required.

Business	Location	Business Type	Website
Red Rover	Corvalis, Oregon	Software
Eagle Gate	Salt Lake City, Utah	Education
SouthernLINC	Atlanta, Georgia	Telecom
Big Valley Honda	Reno, Nevada	Retail
The Godfather	Las Vegas, Nevada	Entrepreneur
International Bank	Concord, New Hampshire	Finance

You can also use it to insert videos or maps. I’ll just stick to the same example as above and show the locations of these particular clients.

View Larger Map

You can also input tags that specifically relate to your blog post, which help with search engine optimization.

tags: blogging tools windows live writer

When you are ready to publish your post, simply click Publish, and it will also do a quick spell check for you. If you are not ready to publish yet, simply Save Draft for later, or set the publish date and it will post automatically. There are several other handy little features for you to explore and find on your own.

To get started, simply go to the Windows Live Writer page to download it. Once you have installed the application, go to “Weblog” in the upper navigation and select “Add Weblog Account.” There you will be asked to give the url of your blog, as well as your username and password. That’s it! You can even add other blogs if you like. It will detect the styles, plugins, categories, and recent posts for each one.

A key component of a successful blogging strategy is doing it fairly frequently The more empowered you and your colleagues are to publish content to the web the more likely you are to do it. I hope this helps.

As we all come sailing in to the New Year, there is little pause except to consider what has transpired over the last 12 months and recognize that the world of the web waits for no one. There has been a staggering amount of new blogs launched, a slew of new social networking sites, and just as many widgets, plugins, and assorted applications to deliver content to the widest audience possible.

With all the noise, fragmentation, and attention to the web, the challenge is to resonate, connect with and keep new customers. Listed below are some of the hottest channels and services on the market in 2007. Keep in mind, however, that for most all businesses it still comes down to having a well-designed, optimized website that offers a seamless experience and delivers on its promise.

Channels:

1. Love it or hate it, Email Marketing still holds the lead.
   • 96% of Internet users access Email almost daily.
   • 90% use email to engage in and determine the value of a relationship with a company.
   • 83.0% of marketers surveyed chose email as THE most important advertising medium
   • The ROI for email is twice that of any other online marketing channel.
   • E-mail marketing is growing annually at 8-10%
   • This past year alone, U.S. businesses spent $500 million on email marketing to generate $21.9 billion in sales.
2. Search Engine Marketing & Search Engine Optimization
   • Deliver a targeted, relevant result to a customer at the point at which they are actively searching for what you sell and track the entire path from keyword to conversion. The only problem of course is that the greater the competition the higher the Cost-per-Click (CPC).
3. Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
   • Almost every website uses RSS syndication to deliver content in a format that best suits the user’s needs. What is amazing is how few consumers know what it is, understand it, or know how it can help them consume information. Does it matter? Probably not. Using it is getting easier all the time. When you find a website you want to follow just look for the orange icon and click it.
4. Mobile
   • Mobile Marketing really took off for a while there, and then it seemed to plateau. Carriers and handset manufacturers made it difficult and expensive for most businesses to adopt it. However, the prices have started to come down. Additionally, this year something new came along - the iPhone. Since that time several popular web sites have created their own mobile versions for the iPhone- Google, Digg, and Facebook just to name a few. Mobile is only going to get better as it delivers richer, more useful and more user-controlled (see Twitter below) experiences. (Update: Director of Strategic Services, TJ Crawford talks about another hot mobile service in the works.)

Web Services:

1. Wordpress, a blogging and website software
   • Wordpress has seen incredible growth this past year and rightfully so. Not only do they offer a fairly quick and easy way for you to have a blog or website, but they also have some of the hottest web designers and developers in the world continuously donating their time to building new free and very functional tools for you to use to communicate and extend your reach more effectively.
2. Salesforce, a customer relationship management suite
   • For medium to large to enterprise level companies, managing enormous amounts of varying customer data requires automation. Salesforce offers a variety of different applications for organizing data and managing customers and projects. Understanding that each business has unique needs, many of their applications are customizable. In the past year, they have become even more successful by soliciting input through their Developer Network.
3. Facebook, a social web service
   • Facebook is king! Unlike MySpace, Facebook has inspired a lot of new and different applications to enrich the experience and keep users involved. The creators are still trying to make it pay out–and have even failed in some regard–but it certainly reaffirms how passionate people are about connecting through online communities.
4. Twitter, a mobile social web service
   • Twitter is unique since it is a web service integrated with an application that everyone with a mobile phone already has. People are using it to exchange information in the mobile environment, post updates to their blog or website, and meet new people. There are a lot of potential uses for Twitter across many different types of industries. Just remember you have to say it in 140 characters or less.

Of course, there are many more web services out there that have caught on and are gaining in popularity. As 2008 gains steam, you will undoubtedly see a clear leader - maybe Flock - that is capable of efficiently mashing up and managing multiple sites and accounts such as these. For any other predictions, you can check out fellow Twelve Horses’ bloggers, Josh Kenzer, TJ Crawford , Colin Loretz, and Mike Henderson. No matter what the future holds, you can be sure that the Web will continue to evolve and provide you with the tools needed to get the job done.

Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Google Alerts, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Webmaster Tools, Google, Google, Google, Google.

Okay, now that I’ve got that out of my system, I though I’d share this great little video (see below) that friend and fellow horsemen, Josh Kenzer posted up on his blog, Radical Behavior. It is an informative little piece on the benefits of using Google Docs.

Having Twelve Horses employees working from places like Dublin, Ireland; Atlanta, Georgia; Tampa, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; Salt Lake City, Utah; Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada; and Lake Tahoe, California requires online tools that help us collaborate. Whether it is managing certain aspects of production, compiling feedback and ideas in one central repository, or editing a document in real-time, things like Base Camp and Google Docs really do the trick.

tags: google, docs, online, collaboration, tools

We recently launched a new website on behalf of Nevada Humanities, which has been created to serve as a repository for everything that is uniquely Nevada. You can access the site at http://onlinenevada.org/

Nevada Magazine just published an article on the subject:

Beyond Reading
Interactive Web site tells Nevada’s stories
through its articles, images, and sounds.

Now, thanks to the Online Nevada Encyclopedia (ONE), Internet users can observe the Strip’s 50-year transformation behind the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign in a matter of seconds, spend a day with a fourth-generation ranching family in Gardnerville, and order a drink at the Old Washoe Club in Virginia City. OK, the Web site’s not interactive to that degree, but the Media Gallery allows you to get so up close and personal with the inside of the historic bar that you can view the detail in the pictures on the wall.

The virtual Web site, which incorporates the latest technology in its articles, images, and audio to tell Nevada’s story, officially launched in April. “We wanted an experience that goes beyond reading,” says graphics editor Howard Golbaum, a professor at the Reynolds School of Journalism at University of Nevada, Reno. “It’s the next best thing to being there.”

ONE was featured at the recent Rural Roundup, the Nevada Commission on Tourism’s annual conference. “From a tourism standpoint, we’ve always promoted rural Nevada, but this is a way to show it,” says Edward Estipona, a board member of Nevada Humanities, a publicly funded non-profit organization that brought the project to life. “There’s a lot of great stuff in addition to Las Vegas and Reno.” The site’s purpose is to preserve the Silver State’s history and educate the general public, but Estipona sees a less tangible benefit. “We think it can help break down some of the cultural barriers that have been created in our state,” he says. “It’s always north versus south or town versus town.”

Designed by Twelve Horses, ONE differs from other information sites of its kind, such as Wikipedia, because all of the 300-plus stories are written and edited by professionals. Nevada is one of only six states to have an online encyclopedia, according to Estipona, who says about 10 new articles appear on ONE per week.

U.S. Senator John Ensign and state Senator Dina Titus were instrumental in funding the project. Ensign helped secure a $350,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education, and Titus worked with the State Finance Committee to match the federal contribution. Several other organizations offered financial assistance. “Budget is the only challenge we see right now,” Estipona says.

If you’re interested in contributing ideas or funds to ONE, contact Judith Winzeler, executive director of Nevada Humanities, at 775-784-6587 or winzeler@unr.nevada.edu.

The strategy was to create a searchable, indexed, and available repository for cultural and historical information pertaining to Nevada. By implementing such an online system, Nevada Humanities would demonstrate their significance as a resource to residents and visitors of Nevada, as well as assist the state in demonstrating all of the unique elements of its history and culture to the public at large.

The site takes advantage of a few key technologies:

• Custom Tag-based Content Management System
• All of the ONE’s articles are stored in a web database and accessed using a tag/keyword based system. All of the directories on the site are “virtual directories” meaning content can be stored and cross-referenced faster and more efficiently. Twelve Horses developed new technology called Mod-CMS specifically for this solution.
• Custom “Wiki” Back-End
• The ONE site administrators have full access to the content management system and can add/edit/delete/categorize all of the articles, authors, links, suggested readings and media from a fully relational web database.
• The design is based on Wikipedia, however ONE’s Editors needed a method to completely control the content and it’s availability to its readership, rather than often inaccurate visitor contributed content.
• Virtual File Directories
• Because content is only a directory away from root and the URL’s are clean, the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of this site is boosted, along with search engine ranking.
• Virtual Reality Multimedia Gallery
• A media gallery was developed to store virtual reality (VR) movies, images, and is planned to also store historic audio files. The media gallery can be accessed from any site category and also from an article page.
• Full-Screen Virtual Reality
• Technology was developed to show the VR movies in their own window and can be expanded to a full-screen view.
• Flash and User-Interface
• A Flash header was incorporated and all major categories are color-coded for enhanced usability.
• Interactive Virtual Reality
• A Special Feature section was added to the homepage to exploit more feature-rich, highly interactive virtual reality movies. These movies can be controlled in their own windows with zoom, full-screen and 360 degree pan attributes.

Getting folks to sign up for events can sometimes be a challenge. How do I drive prospects to my site to sign up without an email list? How do I extend my event marketing reach without a budget? Google has just added a new tool that helps alleviate these concerns and makes it easy to share your event details with the greater Google community, and more specifically, those in your immediate local region.

Recently released and easily accessed when you log into your Google Calendar, is the new ability to “Search Public Events”. Simply add an event to your Google calendar, as well as the “public” calendars, and your event instantly becomes searchable to the Google community looking for an event with your search term, in your area, for a specific date.

To promote your events using Google, you simply add them as part of Google’s public events search to help people find them. If you’ve already got a calendar or event on your site, or in your schedule, you can import directly into Google calendar and mark it “public”. Just like with search engine optimization, content is key. Make sure your title and text are clear and concise and describe your event in as much detail as possible, along with a complete address (including city/state) for your event.

I found searching for events in my area was a breeze. All I did was select my location and date/time range and Google gave me a list of relevant events, based on my defined search. I could preview each event’s details, and then copy a selected event directly to my Google calendar. And I could share it with others - colleagues, friends, family.

This just might be the ticket for those who want to extend their reach, without lots of dollars to put behind their event marketing. Or at the very least, drive traffic to your site for “Googlers” to learn more about your offerings, and maybe even gain an event attendee!

Who ever said there’s no such thing as “free marketing”! Check it out…