When I was a Media Director my job was to find cost efficient media placements as well as premium media adjacencies. For example, the last TV spot in the cluster just before the CBC National News is an affordable premium media adjacency. The last TV spot in the cluster just before the Stanley Cup Playoff is a good example of a far less affordable premium position.

The theory is that a great media position opens the mind and the heart and lets the message flows to the decision center of the brain more freely.

This 3D Lighthouse for Nova Scotia Tourism in the heart of Toronto’s financial district is a fantastic example of how a premium media position works.

• In a sea of and the ebb and flow of cars and pedestrians this lighthouse stands out.
• It’s eye-level and scaled to life.
• It’s iconic.
• But best of all - it’s parked right in front of the Royal Bank of Canada’s head office tower at Bay & Wellington here in my Toronto. The entrance of the building is behind the lighthouse.

Can you image the conversations going on between the RBC and BNS marketing departments.

Amazing!

Because most people will spend no more time than that on your site, here’s what you can do to make every second count.

• Add basic contact information to your home page. Don’t make me “look” for you or make me fill out a form. I haven’t used forms for years and the spam is minimal.
• Keep your site content relevant and fresh: it’s a showcase not an archive.
• Review your site’s traffic patterns to find out which pages are most popular and make sure that your most popular pages tell your visitors:             
  1. who you are, what you do and what your competitive advantage is,
  2. why your brand is a better choice than the competition’s, and
  3. how they can start a relationship with you.

Consider this website behavior profile based on my review of more than 50 websites:

• About 25-50% of visitors arrived at the wrong place because they are not even close to your trading zone. They leave a few seconds after they arrive.
• Of those who looked around, about ½ view a 2^nd page.
  • So that’s about 25-37% of the initial “total page views”.

• 25-50% are repeat visits.
  • So on new visits you’re down to about 13-25% of “total page views”.

• About 50% of those visitors look at a 3^rd page on your site.
  • So less than 10% of all visitors that viewed three pages.

• Importantly only a small number of sites “held” readers interest for more than two minutes, and moved the retained audience to the “contact page” - typically the 5th or 6th page. Even then less than 10% of those who landed on the home page made it this far into the top sites.

• While most sites I reviewed had more than ten pages and some had over 50, most pages simply are not viewed. "Out of sight, out of mind" seems to apply to web-sites as well.
  

Summary:

While organic search scores can be improved with blogging, on line advertising, cross links, online PR, newsletters and social media (to help increase the marketing funnel diameter), “content” is still king.

If your website content isn’t 1^st rate, your audience won’t stay long.

I once knew a man who sold hotdogs. He had inherited the recipe from his parents, made each one by had and used to sell them on a busy street corner for 25¢ each. At the end of the day he took his earning home, paid his bills and reinvested the balance in his business.

Because people loved the man and his hotdogs, sales grew quickly. One day the man had saved up enough to build the restaurant of his dreams. It was located at the same corner where he sold his 1^st hotdog about 20 years ago. Now the man could sell his wonderful hotdogs all day and all night long. And to ensure the old man could sell all the wonderful hotdogs he could produce he began to advertise.

Everywhere.

All the time.

On the day the man’s son left for college, he stood in front of his beautiful restaurant and cried.

• He cried because he was happy.
• He cried because he was thankful for that little hotdog recipe that his parent’s had given him because it had enabled his wife and children to prosper.
• He cried because he was so amazed at the growing line-ups that all the advertising brought to his restaurant.

One spring morning and many years later, the old man’s son returned from college and sat his father down. He explained to his father that there was a war on, that people were not spending money the way they used to, and that the recession, which was projected to follow, promised hard times for almost everyone. His son told him to stop wasting money on advertising. “No more TV, newspaper, radio or outdoor billboard ads. And no more big search lights on the roof all night long. O.K. Dad? All that’s gotta to stop.

The old man thought, “My Son must be right. He just came back from university where he studied business and economics for six years. What do I know? I’m just an old man that loves to sell hotdogs”

• That night the searchlight was turned off.
• The next day all advertising contracts were cancelled.

And the next week sales fell for the first time in 30 years.

When the man went to bed he counted and then thanked God for his blessings: especially for the return of his smart son and his amazing business acumen.

Despite the perception in the marketing industry that direct mail and telemarketing are less effective than digital channels, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has found that direct mail boasts a 4.4% response rate, compared to email's average response rate of 0.12%, says Yory Wurmser, director of marketing and media insights at the DMA.

• Depending on how one crunches the numbers, direct mail has a response rate of up to 10 to 30 times that of email — and even higher when compared to online display ads.
• Using transactional data from Bizo and Epsilon, the DMA analyzed more than 29 billion emails and 2 billion online display impressions to track consumer actions both immediately following a click and in the days and weeks after being exposed to an online ad.
• Overall for display, only 6% converted as a result of the immediate action of the click, Wurmser says, meaning that 94% of conversions happen at a later date — an important finding, considering that the success of display's impact is generally judged by its click-through rate.

Despite this news, Wurmser notes that in the nine years the DMA has been doing its response rate report, the rate for direct mail, while still “the better channel than any other out there right now,” has gone down 25% overall.

“Yes, there has been a reduction in the response rate level from a direct mail perspective,” he says. “But, looking at it strictly in terms of response rate, direct mail still outperforms digital.”

However, from an ROI point of view, email is more cost-effective than direct mail or telemarketing. The report found email had the highest ROI, at $28.50, compared the $7 for direct mail.

• And because it’s more “cost-effective” most clients and agencies judge it to be the better media alternative.
• Ironically the media is often purchased to promote brands – which technically are not “cost-effective”. Think Maserati vs. Ford.

While direct mail remains a strong medium, overall response rates are declining. My experience says the culprit is “all media”. Ostensibly we can only consume so much information before we’re full. Every year we are offered more product, service and media choices – but no one’s offered any more time.

So while the proliferation of emails and display ads makes direct mail, on a per capita basis comparison, less cluttered, the time the average person has to devote to any given medium is down.

This report overview is based on data collected through an April 2012 email survey and an analysis of transactional data provided by Bizo™ and Epsilon™.

A recent IAB study has found that moving TV ad dollars to digital advertising can increase reach while lowering overall costs.

IAB officials say that moving 15 percent of a firm's TV spending dollars to digital ads can increase the reach of consumer-packaged goods (CPG) by over 3 percent in the 18 and over demographic. In non-CPG categories, the study found that incremental reach grew by over 6 percent on average in the same demo.

"This study documents that brands need both online media, especially digital video, and TV to reach consumers effectively," says SVP of research, analytics, and measurement at IAB Sherrill Mane.

"It's eye-opening to discover that viewers actually have an easier time naming the brand behind a TV commercial if they have had the opportunity to be introduced to the creative first on a digital screen. Marketers and media planners clearly need to start thinking about their digital buys - whether video or display - before they forge ahead with a traditional television buy, in order to optimize reach and effectiveness."

According to IAB's study, TV-only schedules for CPGs reach over 61 percent of the 18 and over demographic. While TV-only schedules for non-CPGs reach roughly 48 percent of the same demo.

When reallocating 15 percent of TV ad spend to digital platforms, CPG reach reportedly grew to over 64 percent for the 18 and over demographic. Non-CPGs that performed the 15 percent switch saw reach jump to over 54 percent with the 18 and over crowd.

In comparison, the IAB also found that reach in the aforementioned demographic only stands at over 6 percent for CPGs using an online-only campaign. While reach for online-only non-CPGs was measured at around 10 percent for the 18 and over set.

IAB's study found that launching campaign video ads online first is a good way to generate buzz. According to the group's research, an online-first strategy for video-based ads is the way to go for TV campaigns.

Statistics showed that online video had a stronger impact on consumers' general recall, brand recall, message recall, and ad likeability metrics when compared to TV ads. On average, the study found that consumers streaming 20 second video ads watched the full ad 87 percent of the time.

The study's outlook comes from research performed by Nielsen. Nielsen's numbers came from research performed over the course of 2011 to 2012. Data gathered by Nielsen research platforms was cross-examined with Census data to uncover demographic statistics.