My agency has handled regional online campaigns, which meet our targets for a year within just 9-10 months. Our campaign planning does take note of media, analytics, marketing and creative concerns.

However, I would definitely love to know more of the way Malaysian online professionals tackle the challenges in the interactive arena. I think it’s good for interactive professionals from around the region to meet and talk. Each market has its own dynamics and we will all benefit from sharing our thoughts about them.

well, I guess if you don’t know what you’re doing then using interactive marketing to drive repeat traffic (web traffic or foot traffic into a physical outlet) and to drive repeat purchases can be hard (online or offline—doesn’t really matter as long as we are driving sales).

but there IS talented digital marketing expertise in malaysia that knows lots about digital branding, intuitive UI, back-end system development, analytics and so on.

two excellent examples are weng keong and his team at arachnid and steve hsia and his people at agenda, amongst others on the scene here. (and i would hope that our clients think the same about those of us at web guru asia, too, but i leave that up to them )

and this doesn’t count others working in related areas in the space like jordan khoo of eyeblaster and rene menezes of media 2.0. these guys are also very good and know what they’re talking about.

i don’t think we should sell ourselves short by any means.

jeff zweig
chief guru, web guru asia
http://www.webguruasia.com

“Very few campaign websites or portals have the type of intuitive UI, Compelling Content and backend programming to pull this off i.e. Amazon.”

As for branding, the web scene in this part of the region was largely nurtured by website design companies, which went on to brand themselves as interactive advertising agencies.

Such set-ups are normally poor in analytics (or have no background) and marketing. Their heritage is based on creating corporate branding sites or what we call brochureware, which are based on highly rigid corporate guidelines with a lack of stress in promoting long term user engagements.

I’m really looking forward to catching up one day in Singapore, so we can talk more. As for FI, truth be told, I prefer catching F1 at Sempang.

what if as a direct result of a tactical campaign, someone makes a trial purchase (or downloads an e-voucher, etc., etc.) that naturally leads them to want to make repeat purchases of the client’s product or service because they liked the product so much after the trial? or how about a tactical campaign that leads directly to an ongoing paid subscription?

doesn’t that lead to significant business value to the client that lasts far beyond the duration of the single, tactical campaign?

isn’t this the type of measurable, conversion activity that goes even beyond just branding?

wouldn’t you agree that in this context, branding is not the ultimate goal? and that by directly generating sales, the campaign meets the true ultimate goal of any marketing/promotional activity, which is to increase the client’s net profit and/or increase its shareholder value?

we don’t run branding exercises just for the sake of branding alone, right? don’t we do it for reasons like increasing market share, improving customer loyalty, etc. because these are the things that lead to increased profits and shareholder value?

ok, enough questions for now. let’s continue one day in singapore ☺

enjoy the F1,

jeff zweig
chief guru, web guru asia
http://www.webguruasia.com

As for tactical campaigns, my main gripe with them is that they last too short a time on cyberspace for real brand conversion to take place. Of course, if the promotion offer is good, you get instant conversion but that’s only for that particular offer and for that particular campaign duration.

As for your ideas on video announcments by corporations, I agree wholeheartedly. They should be done as the people in the videos put a face on the company and information can be reduced succintly and visually via a video approach.

As for coffee, I would love to take up your offer but I’m currently in Singapore. We can email each other instead. I’ve just emailed you : >

On the first part of your comment where you have written to me, I guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree. ☺

We have each made our respective points of view clear in our previous posts so there’s no need to repeat anything further here. Perhaps a drink after work would be in order to exchange our differing views in person? Please email me on jeff@webguruasia.com if you’re interested in meeting up!

Here are some thoughts on the second part of your comment as written to the Frog of Blogging:

Actually, I don’t agree with your general rejection of tactical lead generation campaigns.

I see nothing wrong with them as long as they are part of an overall, properly developed, long-term communications strategy designed for periodic engagement over time with the newly acquired leads that gradually leads them through to purchase or other relevant action desired by the client’s business.

In fact, such tactical campaigns can deliver excellent results even in the immediate term by encouraging conversion actions with potentially high value to the client’s business such as special offer/promotion purchase, full price purchase (using psychological tactics such as urgency/scarcity), free trial or trial purchase, event registration and so on.

I agree with your point about posting a company’s annual report online but I would offer the following extensions to this idea:

+ how about an audio or video commentary by the management team to make the dry
annual report in PDF format come alive in new and interesting ways?

+ better yet, how about periodic audio or video podcasts and blog posts throughout the year that update current and potential investors about the goals laid out in the most recent annual report?

Not only does this keep investors engaged, but done with the right interactive agency partner it can generate significant search engine ranking juice plus generate new ways of grabbing the attention of the press (local, regional and international).

Not only that, but because so few companies are even thinking of pursuing programmes like this, the content will stand head and shoulders above competitors and will be a differentiating factor in and of itself, thereby cutting through the clutter of all the mundane information that current and prospective investors must cull through from every other company.

+ Even better, for companies listed on the KLSE who now must now by law report on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts, what better way to reach not only investors, but every other type of stakeholder with content and an online experience related to the company’s latest good work in CSR?

jeff zweig
chief guru, web guru asia
http://www.webguruasia.com

Clicks will always remain part of our conversation with clients when it comes to performance metrics as conversion cannot be guaranteed.

That’s why I have earlier made it clear that there is a need to split the metrics to qualified and unqualified leads. Mere clicks definitely fall into the second category.

I have done country-specific and regional campaigns and are privy to the planning of campaigns in US and Canada and our starting point is always clicks. It is the most tangible sign of user interaction with the campaign when it comes to banners and registrations or submissions when it comes to websites and social media.

But we always made it clear that these are unqualified leads and we outline the ways in which we can either sift out real conversions or promote them.

A jump from clicks to a focus on conversion in this region is premature, given we lack the tools, reliable data and the expertise to guarantee qualified response.

If this was not the case, why would campaigns in this region boasts of successfully reaching millions merely by putting banners in portals which boasts of millions in traffic. This thinking is so traditional media house and I have pointed out ways why such thinking is misleading.

Real expertise and data are clearly missing here to make a case for pushing qualified leads or response i.e. conversions.

It’s a good area to focus but until people develope the right tools here, it’s a word that we must use with care.

=============

blogfrog, I am not advocating the use of just one metric as I focus on CTR as well, which is a combination of 2 metrics.

The number of metrics will also increase with the number of online media or channels utlised by the campaign. This is a given.

That’s why I have pointed out earlier that clients are ill-served by a portal centric strategy as portal traffic can be grossly misleading and overstated as well.

But I do see duration of a page view is a necessary component to any campaign. It allows us to track which pages of a portal or campaign website garners the most attention, as well as which products, which ads, which blogs are the ones people are spending time on.

This allows us to better quantify our placement of advertising outreach be it banners, sponsored content, meta tagging. This metric allows us to take baby steps into making online advertising a science, rather than a craft and assumption-led guesses that currently characterise it.

As for measuring activity, the industry is already using registrations and downloads for years but the response is increasingly tepid as time passes.

One possible reason for this is that activities on campaign sites are normally encouraged by short term incentives or spurred by short term hype or fads. It’s more of a flash in the pan strategy.

Case in point. The current Intenet is a cyber graveyeard for flashy campaign domain names and websites whose shelf-life does not last beyond the campaign period. This type of disposable advertising is like mainstream newspaper advertising and doesn’t really build brands in the long term.

However, I will inject a qualifier. I do think the trend to move the publication of annual reports to online websites and pdf downloads is a trend that cannot be denied due to cost considerations and as a more effective way of reaching out to potential local and overseas investors.

In my recent trip down to Singapore for a Yahoo presentation, Ken Mandell categorised the banner or display advertising delivering 3 distinct results; Branding or Sales, or both.

Most basic campaigns will generate exposure, and as such its about raising top of mind awareness, creating presence and the CTR is secondary.

On the other hand, some campaigns focus on call to action, which are measured by click throughs. If that’s the end goal.

Duration of a pageview is an interesting concept, if its tied to some form of measurement on ‘interaction’. I belief Eyeblaster run rich media ads that track interaction levels. However, duration is difficult to track considering the user may not be looking at your ad or interacting with it.

The concept of ‘action’ or ‘activity’ is something the industry should look towards, beyond click through to registrations, downloads of video or pdfs etc.

Ultimately per my earlier comments, I continue to insist that online media advertising today require a variety of measurement models mashed up to provide a variety of key results. Success cannot be defined by one factor in this modern age and times.

i’m not sure what you mean by “conversion has grey areas in that people who click on the banner may not necessarily be the ideal target audience”.

indeed, people who click on a banner may not be the ones we are after.

but that’s the whole point of focusing on conversion actions and not clicks n the first place!

you have just made my point.

here’s why:

a click on a banner is not a conversion action. only a relevant follow-up action such as “register now” after clicking through to a landing page has meaning and relevance in most cases.

this is my whole point: we shouldn’t focus on click-through rate as the main metric because it’s meaningless unless the person converts.

in most cases, only the conversion action is meaningful to the business and therefore this is the main metric to focus on.

sorry, but I don’t see any grey areas here at all ☺

jeff zweig
chief guru, web guru asia
http://www.webguruasia.com