Un ménage à trois qui porte ses fruits

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

On est bien d’accord que le ménage à trois (ou plus) suscite généralement interrogations et indignations, du moins au Liban. Néanmoins, au sein de ce débat sans fin, il existe des dynamiques ‘poly’ qui s’avèrent être des success stories. C’est le cas notamment de la collaboration fructueuse entre Eastline Digital, vit-e et MV Santé Vision.

MV Santé Vision est leader dans la correction des troubles de la vision en Suisse Romande, avec à son actif plus de 20,000 yeux opérés ces 10 dernières années, une équipe de chirurgiens ophtalmologues expérimentés, et un matériel à la pointe de la technologie et en exclusivité dans la région.

Basée à Beyrouth depuis 2006, Eastline Digital est la première agence indépendante fondée au Liban dédiée au marketing digital, et une des pionnières dans les régions du Moyen-Orient et de l’Afrique du Nord. L’agence est lauréate de plus de 42 prix locaux et internationaux, et compte dans son portfolio plus de 550 clients dans 32 pays.

 

 

vit-e branding & digital crée et redynamise les marques grâce aux pouvoirs de la pensée conceptuelle et de la communication visuelle créative, de solutions sur mesure, d’une expérience client hors pair, de la perspective adaptée aux besoins de chaque projet et de la contextualisation. Fondée à Beyrouth en 2000, vit-e compte déjà à son actif plus de 500 clients à travers 27 pays, dont des multinationales, des institutions et des entreprises.

Pour MV Santé Vision, Eastline Digital s’occupa de mettre en place une stratégie de communication digitale holistique laquelle se révéla être un ajout capital aux dispositifs de communication de cette entreprise. Eastline assura – et continue de le faire – à MV Santé Vision une visibilité digitale optimale, en offrant des services innovants de création de contenu, de promotion, de sensibilisation, d’information, d’interaction contextualisée, d’engagement et de conversion.

 

 

Quant à vit-e, celle-ci s’occupa de la stratégie et de l’identité de marque de MV Santé Vision, de la conception de supports marketing imprimés, de l’UX Design – Expérience Utilisateur – et l’UI Design – Interface Utilisateur – du site-web, ainsi que du design de stands d’exposition polyvalents.

 

 

Grâce à un dialogue en mode continu entre ces trois entités, à la diversité des talents et à une expertise pointue, les plateformes et espaces créés pour MV Santé Vision offrent une expérience se démarquant de la masse, puisque celle-ci est le fruit de l’interculturalité et de la recherche de l’unité dans la diversité des solutions au-delà de visions limitées du possible. La relation MV Santé Vision/Eastline Digital/vit-e comporte un engagement consistant à déterminer au quotidien des objectifs mutuels, à se partager les responsabilités, les ressources et les récompenses, à oeuvrer ensemble à concrétiser une perspective commune, et à intégrer trois enjeux que les marketers et communicants se doivent de relever: la vision stratégique, le savoir-être digital et la production d’un contenu toujours plus créatif en misant sur trois valeurs essentielles – la proximité, la spontanéité et l’authenticité.

Blogs and Advertising

/0 Comments/in , , /by

For many of us, the idea of just sitting back, writing down your thoughts and ideas, and making enough money to sustain yourself doing that is the ultimate dream. This is what many bloggers out there are doing, and quite successfully.

Some of you will simply be looking for a couple of hundred extra dollars a month to pay internet bills or otherwise, while others will be looking to make thousands of dollars a month doing something that they love and are passionate about.

Blogs like Lifehacker and Mashable have succeeded in profiting from having advertisers use their platform. They make millions of dollars per year through banner advertising. Certainly, that means they must be doing something right.

Potential advertisers can easily access an advertising page on these sites, giving them traffic information, statistics, as well as their media kits and rate cards. There is a lot to learn from big sites like those, using what we learn to our advantage in our own ‘little’ blogs.

In addition, it is particularly clever that they both use Social Media to promote their posts and articles, through their Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts. The more people that read their posts, and share them through Social Media networks, the more traffic they get, and thus, the more appealing to potential advertisers. That is also a lesson to learn.

This all brings up a few curious questions though, such as:

  • What makes a blog successful in your opinion?
  • Is it writing about a topic that interests you, or a topic that interests the majority of the people online, and then ‘pretending’ it interests you to get more readers and followers?

Share your views!

Keeping Up With the Times

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

It is no big surprise that the internet is now the fastest growing media for advertising. Everyone saw this coming. On the other hand, traditional media such as TV, radio and print, are seeing a downtown in their use, and thus revenues.

As with every change in life, one needs to learn to adapt to be able to continue growing. Those traditional media companies who were reluctant to change, have been left grasping for air, while the companies that actually began integrating Digital Media early on are seeing many positive changes.  After all, the existence of one media platform does not signify the eradication of another media platform. All platforms should always be kept in mind for those owners of said traditional media houses, also keeping in mind what the best way to approach any given consumer/client with whatever product or service one is promoting.

Looking into recent statistics, the one real risk that traditional media houses run now is to become extinct if they do not learn to adapt (even so slightly) to these changes, and to adapt quickly. Some aren’t adapting to them or haven’t yet because they didn’t see it coming, or they did see it coming but didn’t do anything about it, or they just simply don’t know where to start and what to do.

The rise of Social Media is the biggest shift in the Industrial revolution thus far but at the end of the day, it should be the consumer that drives the companies to make certain changes, especially when it comes to Social and Digital Media. As long as all media companies never lose sight of the consumer, what they want, and delivering that to them in an effective way, then they will always be ready to deal with any changes in media.

The Art of Listening

/0 Comments/in , , /by

The undisputed growing popularity of social sites such as Facebook and Twitter mean that advertisers now have the opportunity to create a direct channel of communication with their consumers.  The continuous interaction between users on brand pages, provide key insights on consumer’s online behavior, brand/ product perception, emerging audiences.

Listening to your followers/ likers will not only enable you to understand their culture and language, but more importantly, it will tell you what they like, dislike, ultimately what they want.  Valuable information, such as hot topics and interests, provide great common grounds for initiating content.  For instance, listening to your consumers will enable fine-tuning of your Paid Search Marketing strategy.

Moreover, monitoring posts and actions will help you determine who your brands’ valuable customers are and who your faithful brand ambassadors are.

A key to engaging your followers/likers is to provide them with only 50% product related content. The remaining 50% should relate to what your audience likes/ wants.  This will trigger social conversations and, only conversations create bonding, which in turn translates in higher level of engagement.

Rule of thumb: Consumer talks, advertisers listen!

Creating an Online Strategy with a Limited Budget

/1 Comment/in , , /by

We are living in an era of economical downturn. Most businesses worldwide were affected by the credit crunch and in turn had to make obvious cuts in marketing budgets; a worldwide scenario that puts a strain on marketing strategists to come up with campaigns that generate maximum performance with limited budgets.

High risk proposed strategies get thrown in the trash can, and the demand for measurable performance has become a requirement in every marketing strategy.

Fact: “The most measurable medium in marketing is by far the online realm”

Solution: “Leverage the online medium without diluting budget”

Below are five tips that will help you create effective online strategies with a limited budget:

1-    Technology: Look for new “open source” technologies that will give you leverage over their code. Huge Social Networks, such as Facebook or Twitter, give you flexibility with their APIs. So, taking advantage of their products is the way to go!

2-    Production: Don’t waste your time and money in creating redundant modules or applications that mimic functions that are already existent and tested. For example, instead of developing a website or micro site from scratch in order to run an online contest, use pre-developed social solutions such as the Sweepz app. This will save you time and money.

3-    Targeting: It is very easy to dilute your budget using online advertising, mainly because online gives you the possibility to reach a wide audience at an affordable cost, when comparing to offline media. Anyone can run an online ad on some of the leading online networks around but don’t be fooled by the low costs of clicks (CPC), always refer to qualified professionals with online advertising experience in order to optimize your campaigns and make sure your every dollar is spent wisely.

4-    Adjustment: Some of the great advantages of online marketing are its accuracy and flexibility. Constant monitoring and real time adjustments give you the opportunity to amend your campaigns instantly, guaranteeing optimal performance and controlling your budget expenditure.

5-    Analytics: Measuring your campaign performance is an integral part of budget allocation, and is considered another one of online’s assets. In order to know how much to spend and where to spend, an in-depth analysis has to be made on every aspect of the campaign, from the pre-click to the post-click, from online advertising to social networks engagement.

Online VS Offline Advertising

/1 Comment/in , , , /by

According to Majestic Research, the average fee for an online marketer is 54¢ per click on Google Ads, as opposed to $1000 per column inch on the New York Times magazine, as stated in their rate card.

There is an endless ocean of opportunities beyond what your budget figures dictate. In case you’re spending on both, traditional and online marketing, how will you know which format brings you more? The trick lies in finding common ground to try on both marketing formats.

Print marketing prices are based on the circulation size of the publication and the amount of space you’re buying. While with the broadcast format (radio/TV) the prices are based on the audience estimates and the duration/time length of the advertisement at hand.

Google Ads are pay-per-click, which means you pay every time someone clicks on your Ad. Another method would be buying CPM or Cost per Milli-impression (1 thousand impressions), meaning you’ll be charged every time your ad is shown. CPM is more popular among online magazines since it relates to their traditional advertising format in print, where the price is decided by the size, space, and exposure.

Both models seem very different but their results could be compared through the response rate.

At the end, the main goal is the sales increase and the ad’s effect. No matter the source of the advertisement, the focal point will be the ‘customer acquisition cost.’

That is why, one can compare various advertising outlets through their CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) as a common factor.

An example would be when you spend 54¢ per visitor in Google and your site’s sales is average then you have a conversion of 2%, which, in value, equals 1 visitor out of 50. This means your CPA from Google would be equal to $27.00.

This happens as opposed to a quarter page advertisement in the New York Times where $10,000 will get you an exposure volume of 2 million people, though the response rate from this exposure will be 1 out of every 5000, meaning it will be around 400 calls. The sales team will convert 25% of this into sales, which is 100 sales from the $10,000 fee.

Therefore, your CPA is $100, meaning your New York Times ad is four times more expensive than your Google Ad.

Print is always more expensive, just as broadcast is more expensive than print, but this analysis between Google Ads and New York Times does not measure the power of brand awareness they could harness. There is a strong theory that suggests that brand awareness could not be developed or enhanced through online marketing, unlike TV advertising where everything is about brand awareness and empowerment.

The psychology of the customer plays a role in both formats as the traditional ads hit the viewers/customers while doing something out of focus (watching TV, listening to radio, driving on the street), while online ads hit the customer during searching for a certain product or service, therefore the ratio of spreading your ad is limited online, unlike the other media. This also applies to launching new products where people have to be aware of a product’s existence so to know what to look for a goal both formats have in common.

Comparing other parts of the process such as initial response rates would be a risky business as it makes the whole analysis vague, similar to comparing response rate to flyers on the streets to response rates for Google Ad clicks.

Another point of difference between the two formats is the nature of the interaction between the viewers/targets of the ad and the ad itself. Telephone marketing involves two people talking, with a caller, therefore able to curb rejection, work around it, and interact on the human level, through tone, voice, and language. On the other hand, online ads are uniform in figure and content that appears the same throughout the whole targeted region. That’s why a website’s content has to be catchy, persuasive and seductive, with the least interaction possible with the viewer.

The collection of comparison data requires a proper structure to monitor the source of every client that calls your phone, and the type of ad that led this person to become a potential client. Did he read your site link in a print ad? Or was that where he got the phone number from? To make the segregation process easier, create a URL address to be placed in the print ads specifically and a different phone number only listed on the site.

The bottom line of the whole process is not how you got the client to contact you as much as what the cost of acquiring this client was. By comparing all your advertising outlets, in most media formats, and using the Cost per Acquisition method, you will be able to put your finger on the outlet that yields the best results with the least expenses.

Eastline Marketing’s focus is online marketing in all aspects, from website integration and improvement to increased presence on search engines and directories. Though the traditional media may be a necessity for further exposure, no one can deny the ultimate influence and power that the internet wields in our daily life, and that is the art that we have mastered.

Choosing the Right Advertising Model for Your Website

/0 Comments/in , , /by

For most of us involved in digital media advertising, the question about which pricing model works best for a specific campaign is clear. But when it comes to choosing the right model, publisher websites are stuck wondering.

Here are a few steps that will help you earn money from your website the most efficient way, and remember that choosing the right advertising model can drastically increase your revenue. Some of the factors that will help you choose the right advertising model are very obvious such as niche, the number of unique users that your website attracts, the demographical breakdown of the users, the number of page impressions that it generates, etc.

Let’s go over the three main advertising models, their respective pros & cons and explaining when to use them.

CPM (Cost-per-Mille) – in Latin mille means thousand

An impression is counted every time one of your users sees a text or banner advertisement on your website. If your website generates a significant amount of page views (page impressions), CPM is definitely the model you might want to implement, however, keep in mind that with CPM you will not get any money from clicks. If you can generate a high number of clicks on your website than you might want to consider a CPC model (See further below).

CPM is a profitable model if your website generates high traffic/low clicks but certainly will not be as profitable for advertisers who are running call to action campaigns as they will have a very low Return on Investment (ROI) and might not consider selecting your website for future campaigns unless you give them a good deal. However, advertisers who are planning to launch an awareness campaign might be delighted by the visibility you can provide amongst your users.

CPM is also considered a risk free model for publishers (website owners) as the only thing they really do is deliver the number of impressions that an advertiser books without worrying about the performance of the campaign. This one-sided environment made advertisers search for a better model, one that can guarantee some sort of performance, thus the birth of the CPC model.

CPC (Cost-per-Click)

CPC is considered to be a very simple formula that satisfies both the publishers & the advertisers in a fair environment. For the advertiser to benefit from the clicks that an ad placed on a publishers’ website generates, he has to make sure that the specific ad is relevant to his product and/or offer so that a percentage of these clicks turns out into goals/objectives. On the other hand, the publisher has the mandate to properly place the advertiser’s banner on his website so that it generates the most clicks, better yet, the most quality clicks (relevant clicks to the target audience) knowing that a good performing campaign will result in a good ROI, thus driving the advertiser to keep spending money on clicks, campaign after campaign, and for longer periods.

One of the very few problems of the CPC model is the possibility of running into click-frauds. A click-fraud occurs when an automated script attacks a website and generates hundreds of fake clicks on a banner, turning a successful campaign into a nightmare. Combating this fraudulent method is something that any publisher has to keep in mind before opting to use a CPC model.

CPA (Cost-per-Action)

CPA model throws all the risk on the publisher, plain and simple. A publisher must know that his traffic is guaranteed to generate actions (e.g.: form submission, registration, purchase, etc.) or else he’d be giving it out for free, without generating any income. If you have ideal traffic i.e. high traffic which converts well, then this is your best bet. What you need to do as a publisher to ensure a profitable CPA model, is make sure that an advertiser’s campaign follows certain standards because you don’t want to end up serving free advertisement for clients whose ads are irrelevant to begin with.

As an advertiser, a CPA model represents the best ROI possible for your campaigns. Obviously, you are only paying for the leads you are getting, thus minimizing your risks.

Final Note

There are many who argue that all three pricing models are just different flavors of the same thing. In a way this notion is not faulty since all three models rely on common numbers to estimate the final cost.

Example: An advertiser wants to sell 100 carpets at $100 apiece. His 75% margin gives him a profit of $75 per item before advertising cost. His cost of goods is $25 by default.

Here’s the simulation of all 3 models:

In the first simulation the advertiser buys 100 CPM at $5/per for a total cost of $500. His campaign generates a CTR of 2% and generates 2,000 clicks to his landing page. Let’s say that 5% of those clicks turned into a sale, that’s a total of 100 sales and $10,000 in cash money. His total gross is $10,000, Total advertising cost = $500 and Total cost of goods is $2,500 and that leaves him with a total net profit of $7,000.

Using CPC model, the same advertiser pays $0.25/click. The same budget of $500 will generate 2,000 clicks for him. 5% of those clicks turned into a sale, that’s a total of 100 sales and $10,000 in cash money. His total gross is $10,000, Total advertising cost = $500 and Total cost of goods is $2,500 and that leaves him with a total net profit of $7,000 just the same.

Finally, Using the CPA model, the advertiser pays $5/lead (5% Commission). The same budget of $500 will generate 100 sales for him and $10,000 in cash money. His total gross is $10,000, Total advertising cost = $500 and Total cost of goods is $2,500 and that leaves him with a total net profit of $7,000 just the same.

So for every price in one model there’s a price for the other two and that’s exactly how publishers & search engines, alike, calculate the different pricing options and sell them. At the end of the day, the model that sells the best is the model that keeps the advertiser feeling happy, safe and profiting without taking a huge risk and in turn making a good profit for the publisher as well.

Success of a PPC Campaign in Five Steps

/0 Comments/in /by

Many factors contribute to the success of paid search marketing campaigns: The choice of keywords, the bid management, the ad text, and the landing pages.

This post tackles five of the most important domains: keyword choice, ad editing, destination URL, organization and analysis of campaigns.

1- Keywords

The success of a PPC campaign starts with keywords. Since your keyword list will probably change and develop with time, it is necessary to start with meaningful words.

Basic keywords: First of all, you must start with basic keywords, which are the words you consider relevant for your website. Of course, you cannot use them all in your PPC campaign. However, they can be a means of finding other expressions. Let us consider that you are an editor in a trade site that sells camcorders. Some relevant keywords can be “camera” or “camcorder”.

Expanded keywords: Use your basic keywords in an expanded way in order to use them as key expressions. By using the examples before-mentioned, you can use resolution options or any other option that can serve to expand your keywords. You can use words like “discount” or “waterproof”, what will give you “discount digital camera” or “waterproof digital camcorder”.

The product brands and model numbers are also very important in paid search campaigns. Do not forget to aim at your brand names in order to obtain for example “Canon digital camcorder” or “Nikon D200 digital camera”.

Do not forget your geographic situation in case you have a physical shop. Your geographic localization becomes therefore very important for your visitors. That’s why you have to include focused keywords with variations depending on your location “digital cameras Lebanon” or “digital camcorders Qatar”. You can also use other neighboring areas, for instance Morocco, Egypt, Dubai, etc…

Do not include long tail expressions which contain multiple keywords and are unlooked-for. In many activities, this type of expressions offers a relatively low cost-per-click and a high qualified visitor. “Canon rebel XTi digital camera” or “digital camcorder rebel XTi Lebanon” can be appropriate for a video camera shop. Even tough these expressions will probably not generate a lot of traffic, the conversion probability will significantly increase if you send your visitors to an appropriate landing page.

Negative keywords: Do not forget to exclude negative keywords. “Free” may be the first negative keyword you must exclude. In the case of a camera shop, you can use brand names as keywords to exclude. If you do not sell Casio or Sony products, use these brand names as negative keywords. This will help you to reduce the unqualified traffic. You can adopt the same strategy for prices. If your products are more expensive than the ones exposed by your competitors, you can use “discount”, “good deal”, “low prices” as negative keywords to exclude.

Elimination: Before putting your ads online, take a step backward and look at all the keywords you used. Eliminate the very general ones or simply not very relevant. If you sell camcorders, it is necessary to include this term in most of the key expressions. However, the term by itself is not very relevant because it will cost a lot and will be less focused. In terms of results, it has a big chance of not converting. Cancel vague sentences or the ones not offering a good level of relevance.

2- The ad text

Concerning your ad, you do not want it only to be visible, but also very relevant regarding your keywords and your destination page. Start by examining ads of your competitors in terms of ad group keywords and see how advertisers call out to internet users. You can use expressions like “discount” or “low price” in the ad text, but make sure that your products will do the job. If the client sees “discount” when your prices are very high, he may not visit your site again.

Try to make sure that your focused keywords are present in the title or in the ad description. Internet users have to see the immediate relevance of what they are searching for. If the request is “Canon digital camcorders” and this expression is not clearly visible in the ad, you will most probably lose a lot of potential clicks.

Also, make sure to create multiple variants of the ad and make them work one against the other. If you find that an ad has an impact more than the others, make an alternative out of it and put on hold the ones that do not offer a good conversion rate. This will help you improve your conversion rates.

3- Landing pages

This will be your first real chance to sell to an internet user. This page aims at giving security to your selling actions. Make sure they are relevant regarding your ad and your choice of keywords. In the opposite way, make sure your ad and your keywords are relevant regarding this page.

It seems logical to proceed this way. Many use ad groups directing to the same landing page. If you use the term “Canon”, therefore, you have to direct the users to a Canon page. If you use the term “Nikon”, you also have to direct the users to a Nikon page. Do not use two keywords for two different aims in the same ad pointing to the same page.

4- Organization

The organization of your PPC campaign depends on your needs as advertisers. In most of the cases, you will have one campaign divided into many ad groups. Each ad group will be focused on a set of key expressions and similar ads. You can have ad groups split up by brand (Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc.), by camcorder types (digital, reflex, 35mm) or by combination of both.

Having your campaigns and your ad groups well organized can save time when it comes to increasing the relevancy and optimizing your ad and your combination of keywords.

Dividing your account into several campaigns can also be very useful. Imagine that you do not want to spend more than 16$ a day in your Canon campaigns and 32$ in Nikon’s. In this case, you must divide your account into several campaigns by brand, then each brand of the ad group can be divided according to the functions and types of camcorders.

Another example of managing several campaigns is the geographic targeting. For instance, if you have some of your ads that are relative to Lebanon and Qatar and you only want them to appear at the local level, you can create a campaign for each ad and assign it to each region.

There are different possible scenarios that can be applied to the configuration of your account. However, try to pick the one that facilitates your account management, no matter the direction you take. One of the main mistakes you can do as advertisers is dumping all your keywords into an ad group and not proposing more than one ad for all your keywords. This will result in a high cost per click and lower click and conversion rates.

5- Analysis

Do not forget to verify the clicks and conversion rates, not only for each ad, but also for each keyword. If you notice that some keywords are not resulting in any selling operation, you can chose to put them on standby or make some changes in order to improve their conversion. This can mean the implementation of a new ad group and the creation of new ads more focused on individual keywords. This can result in implementing new ad group and creating new ads more centered on individual keywords, or maybe just a simple adaptation of the offer.

Conclusion

If there is one thing you must learn from this article, it would be to “stay relevant”. The more you are relevant, the more you succeed in your PPC campaign. Being relevant can not only produce a decrease in the cost per click rates, but it will also increase your conversion chances and offer you a better return on investment (ROI). Make sure that the keywords set, ads, and landing pages are harmonious in order to ensure the best success opportunities.

Eastline Marketing offers successful paid search marketing campaigns for companies that wish to target Arabic Internet users, mainly Lebanon, Qatar, Dubai, KSA, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Yemen, and Algeria.

Contact us for more details!