Un ménage à trois qui porte ses fruits

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.

Twitter Community in Lebanon

Twitter in Lebanon

Twitter in Lebanon

Did you participate in the 14th of January protest against rape?
Did you attend the last event organized by Sarah’s bag “Behind the scenes”?

Where did you get your invitation from?  Twitter. Of course!

Citizens, governments and companies are becoming more and more active on social networks in Lebanon and especially on twitter since the beginning of 2011. Whether to post interesting links to articles, invitations to events or encouragements to participate in manifestations, people are constantly tweeting and re-tweeting.

But it seems that Lebanese personalities are ahead of the competition.

Haifa Wehbe has already tweeted 8,949 times and has 308,429 followers!

In fact, if we look at the current top 10 twitter ranking in Lebanon based on the amounts of followers, we notice that it includes 4 Lebanese singers: Elissa Khoury, Ragheb Alama, Nancy Ajram and Haifa Wehbe, 2 Lebanese politicians: Saad Hariri and Najib Mikati, 2 Lebanese talk show hosts: Zaven Kouyoumdjian and Mona Abou Hamze as well as a religious figure Sayyed Ali El Amin and a Lebanese actor and director Nadine Labaki.

In addition, although not currently in the top 10, Myriam Fares has 137,819 followers and has tweeted 1,092 times. Moreover, Marcel Ghanem, host of many famous TV shows on LBC, has 69,334 followers. Ministers Ziad Baroud, Nicolas Sehnaoui and Gebran Bassil are also very active on Twitter and the list goes on…

The domination of these public figures on social network affects the online community since many Lebanese sign up on twitter just to follow a certain personality and sometimes even just to criticize him by tagging him in mean comments. In addition, Lebanese citizens exteriorize themselves on twitter, as “it is the only place where they can talk and be heard”.  They create hash tags such as #Lebanese electricity to complain about electricity cutoffs.

As for social causes, followers feel encouraged when personalities re-tweet their tweets and it helps them reach a larger audience.

Therefore, through this social networking platform, public figures discuss political or musical events with their followers, share some quotes or ideas, support and encourage certain happenings and respond to questions asked by their followers.

Most of them have more replies than tweets!

Not yet on twitter? Too bad! You won’t be able to catch up!

Google+ we are not impressed!

Is it just us or is Google+ still not learning from Facebook and Twitter mistakes and shortcomings?

We are completely aware that the newly launched social network is not yet close to competing with Facebook’s empire and Twitter’s rush , but can you blame our disappointment from Google+ newly launched brand pages?

Google+ is indeed satisfying the masses, and with its newly created brand pages for companies, copycatting Facebook’s pages, companies are rushing to advertize their products on Google+.

First of all, the only features are the rich profiles or about page; you can build circles and list your followers accordingly. However, unlike personal pages, you can only add people to the brand circles if they have added you previously to their circle; hard luck for brands and +1 for the consumers who will have a choice if they want to follow the brand or not.

Brand pages can also benefit from the Hangouts, for group video chats also – but we can hardly imagine here CEO running to catch a glimpse of their targeted consumers, or else it’s their social ambassador stuck behind the webcam chatting with the followers. Come to think of it, unless it’s Kim Kardashian or Ryan Gosling behind these webcams, who cares?

Once you connect an email address with a page you can’t change it and you’re the only one that can edit and admin that page. Although Google has promised that there will be multiple admins in the near future, we wonder when, for now this will be a little awkward for companies that want multiple social ambassadors to communicate through the pages.

What’s really ironic also is that anyone can claim to be a brand at Google+, in other words, if brands do not claim their G+ pages, other wannabes can.

Seriously Google+ is that all you’ve got?

Online Marketing Predictions 2011

In the past 10 or so years, we have seen the Internet world go from barely there, to everywhere. Years of ‘Trial and error’ in Social Media Marketing and/or Digital Advertising have brought us to the point where they have become the number one form of promoting people, products, services, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

In 2010, there were many new technologies in the social media sector. To name and talk about them all would take all day, and probably thousands of pages, and maybe even a Hollywood blockbuster (think The Social Network). Hence, a few of them will be honorably mentioned below, finishing up with some of the most popular predictions for Online Marketing in 2011.

Who didn’t catch a glimpse of the arguably brilliant Old spice campaign on YouTube this past year? The “Smell like a man, man” campaign became an instant hit. More than 180 hilarious ads were shot purely in response to consumers’ inquiries. Very clever campaign indeed.

As for the tweeters out there, you may have noticed something new on Twitter called Promoted Tweets. Twitter took a thing or two from Google here, promoting sponsored terms, along with organic results, whenever a user searched for any term on the site. Organizations such as Coca-Cola and Virgin America claimed to have seen obvious increase in campaign engagement rates as well as sales rates due to those promoted tweets.

Everyone has now heard of Chatroulette, the random video chatting website, which allows you to chat with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Other than obvious perverts takings advantage of it, Travelocity added a nice touch in their advertising on this site. They added their little Gnome character that would appear in chat rooms holding signs saying this like “This would be more fun in Rio”. The idea was to promote travel for those sitting down chatting their lives away.

The next year to come holds a few interesting predictions for digital advertising. Let’s have a small look at three of those predictions.

To start with, local advertising will become relevant again with location. Facebook is expanding this technology with its new location platform, Places. There is a growing use of location platforms such as Foursquare, Yelp, Shopkick, and Google. Advertisers will start using these to alert shoppers of certain deals or sales when informing others of their whereabouts etc… This seems really exciting for the new coming year!

In addition, influencers will be the stars of the social web. Digital advertisers are always on the lookout for new trends, and new ideas for pushing their brands and services out there. Consumers are always online checking out where to go, what to buy and where to buy it, so it is only natural that brands are always seeking the next big thing in reaching out to their consumer base. Finding ways to be socially credible is a must for brands wanting to market themselves online to already established customers, or new ones.

Finally, although it is not yet clear exactly how and why Facebook ‘Likes’ are important, but one thing is for sure, they definitely are. Brands will be using facebook advertising much more in the coming year, and being savvy enough to know how to use it to gather more ‘likes’ for the best possible CPA (cost per acquisition) may be the make or break it point for your brand.

All that being said, feel free to share you’re ideas and opinions on these new technologies. What will you be doing to increase your brand awareness this coming year?

Online VS Offline Advertising

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

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.

Google adds "Remarketing" to Adwords

Google has taken behavioral advertising to the next level. After giving marketers the ability to target users by interests and website-category on the Google Content Network, Adwords now has a new controllable option, that is “Audiences.” Audiences allows you to target specific ads to specific users who have performed a certain action online, such as targeting all users that have visited a specific section on your website or purchased a certain item.

By adding Remarketing – a term created by Google for this type of advertising – to Adwords, Google is bringing advertisers closer to the future, which will tend to rely more on behavioral ads rather than geotargeted ads. For example, remarketing enables you to advertise to certain customers who have already looked to buy book “x”, offers about books from the same author or a similar topic – a technique used by websites such as Amazon.com.

In the new version of Adwords, you can create a new “Audience List” under the new “Audiences” tab, constituting of customers who share a certain behavior on your site, then generate a tag that could be added to your website. “Audiences” are fully trackable and measurable through Clicks, Impressions and conversion rates.

If you care about your conversion rates, you might want to start by enabling the new “Audiences” tab in any campaign running of the Google Content Network!

Google: Transition from Local Business Ads to Location Extensions

Soon, Google will start transitioning from its Local business ads model to Location extensions. Location extensions is a new Adwords product upgrade that offers several benefits over location business ads.

Brands who have many store locations will benefit from the ability to use the same ad for several store locations. When a potential customer performs a search, their location or search terms are dynamically matched to your business locations, and your most relevant location appears within your ad on Google Search and Google Maps. The new format of Adwords also enables advertisers to create more effective ad headlines rather than having to stick with the business name.

Google suggests you start moving your location business ads to location extensions manually. All ads that are not moved to location extensions will be automatically resetelled by Google in the coming few weeks.

Here is a simple step-by-step guide by Google to help you through the transition.