Advertising Free Shipping
February 26, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
The other day I was reading an old article in the New York Times about how offering Free Shipping on your ecommerce site can significantly increase sales. The article discusses and shares insight into the strategies of the some of the most popular online stores and how they price their shipping and how it can greatly impact sales. Read the article here – Nothing Says ‘Buy’ Like ‘Free Shipping’ .
The Free Shipping Article had me thinking about how a company which was going to offer free shipping for a period of time and how they would promote the offer. Naturally I think most only stores undertaking a free shipping promotion would do two things. First they would put some sort of promotional messaging on their sites advising prospective customers that they might qualify for free shipping on their first order. Secondly, an ecommerce store offering free shipping would reach out to their existing customer with an EDM of sorts advising that for their next order the shipping is free. Another idea is advertising free shipping, but I’ll get back to that in a moment.
What I think most online stores forget is that free shipping could be a great lead generation strategy to build sales. A few years ago I was involved in an online store start up as a consultant. Well before the successful bricks and mortar company started building their new start up website, they undertook a market research study to identify customer ideals, which they assumed were very different from their existing bring and mortar customers.
The number one thing that came from the market research was that customers online were more likely to make a purchase on their new site if the shipping was free, opposed to paying a premium for the delivery. So the company went into the new ecommerce site with the marketing tactic that customers would never pay for shipping. They simply built the shipping into the price point. The result; sales exploded for them and they’ve never looked back. The site has turned out to be a multimillion dollar online business and I believe that it’s because of their foundation that customers will never pay for shipping.
Ok, so you’ve decided to run a free shipping promotion. So apart from reaching out to customers on your site or your existing customer base, you should consider running an advertising campaign to market your free shipping campaign. By advertising free shipping you’re removing one of the hurdles that many online stores face and reaching out to gaining new customers. It could be the best lead generation campaign you’ve ever run.
Apart from simply running your free shipping advertising across our entire network of grocery buyers, we can help develop your advertising creative. It’s important for the creative to indicate that you’re offering free shipping. Don’t put the key message in a small font, make it stand out in bold and gain attention.
For more information about running your free shipping advertising with Gourmet Ads, Download our Media Kit or Request a Proposal from our team.
Explaining Comscore
February 24, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Gourmet Ads is currently in the process of being included in Comscore and as a publisher in our network you’ve probably received a request from our publishing team to sign a Traffic Assignment Letter (TAL) which is located here. We thought it was important to write a short blog explaining this further and why it’s essential for increasing revenue on your site.
What is Comscore?
Comscore is a NASDAQ listed company which provides web business digital market intelligence on sites and audiences. Comscore is the preferred measurement service for many online companies and provides networks like Gourmet Ads independently audited statistics of our entire audience.
Digital Advertising Agencies
Comscore provides media buyers and media planners software to better understand audiences, quickly and easily. Nearly every advertising agency around the globe uses some sort media planning software from Comscore. So being listed with us provides visibility through to agency staff for your site or blog. Because most sites have low traffic they don’t automatically appear in Comscore, so this is a great opportunity to be listed.
Audience numbers
Having third party audited audience numbers from Comscore is a bit like having Google Analytics across every site in our network. This allows media buyers to understand the reach of the Gourmet Ads Network. This is extremely important for brand advertisers who are interested in reaching as many people as possible for their campaigns.
Understanding the audience data
One of the greatest advantages of using Comscore is that media buyers can dig deeper into audience data ie how many kids in a household, how often they go to the supermarket etc. This once again allows the media buyer to analyze our network in consideration to running a campaign for an advertiser.
So what do you have to do?
All you need to do is fill out the Comscore letter at the link below, sign the form and then you’re done.
http://www.gourmetads.com/publishers/comscore
12 Month Media Plans
August 7, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · 1 Comment
Typically speaking, Gourmet Ads is sent RFPs (request for proposals) from advertising agencies usually 2 months or 3 months before a campaign is slated to commence. What we’ve found throughout 2009 that the majority of the media plans were short lead time, sometimes the same week opposed to 2008 when we were given very long lead times. But as great deal of food and wine companies are now starting their 2010 advertising budgets, we are finding that things have changed again.
What we’ve recently been receiving from advertising agencies is requests for not just proposals for campaigns, but we’re being asked to help develop a 12 month media plan. Either with or without budgets, we’re able to develop a complete plan. Some of the areas we take into consideration when developing a 12 month media plan are;
- Peaks and Troughs of traffic
- Seasonal Issues (Holiday Periods)
- Products Selection
- Environmental issues (weather)
- Micro site development
- Share of voice throughout the plan
One of the advantages of developing a 12 month media plan is the ability to targeting consumers though over the life of the campaign. Using technology based targeting such as Behavioral Targeting can help to reach the most relevant people throughout the campaign.
If you’d like Gourmet Ads to help prepare your 12 month media plan we generally require much more information in your brief than compared to campaigns briefs. Ideally we’d also prefer to be given a budget; however we can develop 12 month media plans without a budget.
For more information about Gourmet Ads, download our media kit or request a proposal from us.
Helping our Publishers Grow
May 21, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
I wanted to take a moment and talk about an initiative called the Gourmet Ads Traffic Booster program that we’re starting on the 1st of June for our network of publishers.
We’ve developed a month long program to help publishers increase the traffic to their recipe site, food blog or wine review site. Each day during June, we’ll send out an email with a simple task that publishers can do to help build their traffic. Some days we’ll be search focused; others will be focused on telling people about your site and others we’ll offer up ideas on using social media marketing to drive traffic.
We’re hoping that towards the end of the program we’ll be able to boost long term traffic in the Gourmet Ads network for advertisers. Best of all the strategies we’re helping our publishers with, will mean that we deliver more relevant audiences for you to engage with in the future.
If you’re a publisher and want to learn more visit the Gourmet Ads Traffic Booster page.
Advertising Cookbooks
March 5, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Like most book publishers, cookbook publishers have seen a decline in sales over the past few years. As margins in book publishing have slipped, so have the budgets for marketing and publicity. To combat these reduced budgets, cookbook publishers have sought strategies to create hype when launching a cookbook. This is why we’ve recently begun to see publishers advertise new cookbooks online.
The key to advertising cookbooks online is to quickly create hype around the cookbook release and sell as many copies as fast as possible. So what’s the strategy to Advertising Cookbooks online?
As online retailers such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble begin to offer pre-release sales, a soft campaign should be launched on relevant and related sites. At this stage the advertising campaign should only serve just a few ad impressions per user per day. The key initially is to create general awareness and sales in the weeks to the lead up of the release.
Two or three days prior to the release of the cookbook, a more intense branding campaign should be commenced, possibly with different advertising creative. The ideal creative at this stage should be rich media with video interviews of the cookbook author or even just imagery of the recipes. Its about gaining attention and engagement with consumers.
Then the day before the cookbook is released, roadblock advertising should be undertaken, coupled with strategically placed Over the Page Advertising to get attention. This sort of intense advertising activity will generate a great deal of interest and sales, providing a quick return on investment for the publisher and hopefully a 2nd reprint of the cookbook. Remember it isn’t just about generating online sales, some consumers will still buy the book in a typical bookstore. The digital advertising is about getting the cookbook title and cover out there to an audience of consumers.
Sounds a lot of activity for a cookbook? Well not really. Compare this to taking outdoor, newspaper and magazine advertising and you’ll be surprised that cookbook advertising online is much more cost effective compared to other mediums. Remember the strategy hasn’t been to promote the cookbook to everyone. The advertising has been highly targeted at possible consumers and in this case, regular viewers of food websites and food blogs.
Online Advertising through a channel such as Gourmet Ads is ideal for any cookbook or cooking magazine release. So, if you’re a publishing executive and you’re currently charged with developing a publicity and media plan for a cookbook release, request a proposal from the team at Gourmet Ads.
Search Retargeting
February 23, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
For many companies their entire online advertising strategy relates to search. They purchase related keywords, phrases, branded text and competitor names in the search engines on a pay per click model or PPC. For some, the pay per click search advertising model works very effectively, but for others companies where the click of a consumer doesn’t convert it can be very expensive running lead generation or direct response campaigns on Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft Advertising or any other pay per click network. For those that fit the later, Search Retargeting with display advertising is a strategy which will help reduce some of the churn and increase conversation rates.
Search retargeting is a behavioral targeting technique where a user who searches and clicks on your text ad is taken to your landing page. At this time, using a cookie we record the search term and any related information needed on the user’s machine, ie such as the campaign or category. Then when that user hits a site within the Gourmet Ads network we serve relevant display ads to a user based on the search query and behaviour made earlier on the landing page.
We can even go one step further. For those consumers that go deeper in the transaction and don’t complete it we can server a separate cookie indicating this. So if they save their shopping cart and don’t complete, we could for 30 days target them to return to the site and complete the transaction at a given discount. So for say the first 7 days we could offer 5% off through to 20 days offer 25% discount to encourage them to return. You might even want to run a campaign about a product they added to their cart. The ideas are endless. Think of search retargeting as the ability to continue to talk with your target market after they initially left your landing page or ecommerce site.
Because you’ve already established a relationship with the consumer and they are pre-qualified, the conversion rates are much higher than simply running a display advertising campaign. The key however to running a search retargeting campaign is going wide with as much inventory as you possibly can. By running a search retargeting campaign with Gourmet Ads we not only can provide our inventory, we can also back onto the inventory with our media and ad serving partner Adify to extend the reach of your campaign. This is an essential part of any search retargeting campaign.
Sure the CPM rate will be slightly higher compared to a regular display campaign, but because you already have a relationship with the consumer and they are pre-qualified the benefits of conversion out way the slight cost difference. Search retargeting can be a great strategy to undertake and for any company that solely relies on search marketing and is a risk free way to continue the conversation with your consumer or target market.
Search retargeting keeps consumers engaged with more personalized, relevant advertising experiences, leading to higher click-through rates and conversions. To learn more about search retargeting, contact us or request a proposal for a campaign.
Over The Page Advertising
February 3, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · 2 Comments
During the few weeks of 2009, we have been finding advertising agencies and advertisers asking for ideas and strategy on additional advertising activity which gets their products noticed. One such form of advertising that our team has been recommending is Over the Page Advertising (OTP) or sponsorship as it’s referred to in some parts of the world. That can also be called “Take overs” and are mostly often used to run TV commercials online.
Over the Page Advertising works by loading an overlay above the website when a viewers hits the entry page of the site. Typically the over the page advertising usually plays for between 10-15 seconds, then disappears, reverting to the usual website. As to not annoy viewers, Over the Page Advertising is usually capped to one play per day or even on play per week so viewers aren’t distracted from the content they are visiting the website for. A good strategy can be to run sequential advertising on the site after the over the page advertising has loaded. This way, when a user is finished on the site they have the ability to easily click on the similarly branded advertising they originally viewed.
The key with Over the Page Advertising and any sort of online advertising is the creative. The advertising needs to quickly get the message across and when necessary drive people to click on the adverts. Most Over the Page Advertising uses some form of rich media either, audio, animation, video or more to get the message across. Over the Page Advertising works because it has a high level of audience engagement as well as reach which is what most advertisers want from their campaigns.
Because of their much higher level of engagement, reach and capping restrictions, Over the Page Advertising are priced much higher than usual CPM rates associated with a media buy. Some of the enquiries we’ve received recently are one day campaigns to launch a new product at the beginning of the month and mid way through the campaign to spark up further interest.
Gourmet Ads can run your Over the Page Advertising for just one day or more, so if you’re looking for something different for marketing your products online contact us for more information.
Quantcast
January 8, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Many in the advertising industry, particularly in the US refer to Comscore for their statistic and metrics in regards to analysing website and advertising networks. Unfortunately for most, a subscription to Comscore is very expensive, but great alternative to Comscore is Quantcast which uses pixel measurements to count and rank sites.
Quantcast is a new media measurement service that lets advertisers view audience reports on millions of websites such as Hulu, National Geographic, Fox, Fast Company, Digg, CBS and Martha Stewart to name just a few.
Gourmet Ads aggregates the traffic from all food, wine and beer sites we represent into Quantcast. Although we use our adserving software from Adify to forecast pages and individual users for clients, Quantcast offers those looking to evaluate Gourmet Ads independent statistics from ours.
Apart from the graph above which represents traffic, Quantcast also provides information about the audience. Some of the demographics data provided by Quantcast include sex, geographic location, salary, children and other interesting information which helps media buyers and and media planners in the analysis of advertising networks and websites.
To view Gourmet Ads Quantcast data click here.
Advertising Trends for 2009
December 24, 2008 by Benjamin Christie · 2 Comments
Recently I sat down with Mark Pollard and during the discussion he pointed me to guest blog he did over at Talking Digital Blog called 9 trends to look out for in 2009. This is one of a few industry players who’ve written their opinions of 2009 and the trends. Make sure you check out them here.
Inspired by Mark and the team at Talking Digital Blog, I’ve written my Advertising Trends for 2009. Mine aren’t as wide reaching as the ones on Talking Digital. I’ve tried to keep them related to the space that Gourmet Ads works in (food, wine and beer advertising) as well as reducing the focus on the downturn in economy. So here are my 9 Advertising Trends for 2009;
1. TV Budgets going to Online
Advertising budgets allocated for TV & Print will finally begin to be allocated to online. Ok, so everyone says this from year to year, but 2009 will be the year. This will be mainly driven by company management who will be required to show a return on investment in advertising during the economic downturn. Stupid and willy nilly advertising spends that can’t be measured will be the first thrown out the window.
2. Testing (or smarter media buying)
This is something that’s we’ve seen as a company during the 4th Quarter in 2008. Savvy media buyers are not just buying huge media buys upfront for their clients. Media buyers have been buying small campaigns of say $5000 with a series of different creative to see what best performs on a network. Once they know what creative works with a given audience, they’ll do another media buy which they know will perform as they require. I think given the economic situation we’ll see more testing campaigns during 2009, especially for companies that are advertising online during 2009 for the first time.
3. FMCG & CPG will embrace online
FMCG & CPG companies have for a long time resisted moving their advertising online. This is because they’ve felt it’s been difficult to reach consumers. Research has shown that in economic downturns consumers tend to buy “no name” or “private label” products to save money. Companies like Kellogg’s who’ve been through a number of recessions actually increase their advertising to ensure that their brands are top of mind when consumers are in the supermarket or grocery aisles. With this in mind I think we’ll see companies companies in the food space like cereals, pastas, tinned foods etc as well as dishwasher and cleaning goods start to advertise online in 2009.
4. Companies Buying Direct
In an effort to save money, medium sized businesses will start buying their advertising directly and avoid advertising and media buying agencies. Even though the majority of Gourmet Ads advertising campaigns come from advertising agencies and will continue to be, I think during 2009 (particularly though the 3rd Quarter) we’ll begin to deal with more companies direct.
5. Advertising doing Discounts & Coupons
No brand wants to be known as a “discounter” but given the state of the economy brand advertisers will begin running advertising with discounts, offers and deals. Companies that need to track ROI will also begin using or offering online coupons for consumers to print for redemption in supermarkets and grocery stores. This wont be something that is restricted to CPG or FMCG products, we’ll see it across a range of industries.
6. Less creative more straight to the point advertising
There is a lot to be said for actually saying what the deal is with the online advertising twisting, rotating, spinning or rolling. Related to my 2nd point above about testing, I think you’ll see more advertising that just gets to the point and says the message.
7. More companies hiring Online Marketing Managers
As companies finally decided to embrace online they’ll begin to need internal experience to either work independently of agencies or work in tandem. We’ve already seen a number of out clients in the 4th Qtr hiring Online Marketing Managers or Interactive Managers to take the pressure off the marketing manger. Not only will Online Marketing Managers be responsible for media buying and planning, but they’ll be responsible for strategising and ensuring that their product is translated to online to drive brand awareness and sales.
8. More Vertical Ad Networks
Throughout the US there are Vertical Ad Networks covering nearly ever niche. During 2009 I believe there’ll be a number of Vertical Ad Networks just like the Gourmet Ads network pop up all over the world providing advertisers a smarter avenue to reach their target markets. We’ve already seen in Australia, AdTorque which is another Adify powered automotive network. I predict that travel, finance, business, IT and other niche areas of will become a focus. With this increase in Vertical Ad Networks, we’ll also see advertising agencies understand the difference between Vertical Advertising Networks and Horizontal Advertising Networks, something that some agencies battle to understand.
9. Google will begin to acquire vertical advertising networks
I don’t think I need to add any more comments here…
10. Gourmet Ads launches new verticals networks
As mentioned in our 2009 media kit, we’ll be launching three new verticals during 2009. These will in BBQ, Restaurants and Coffee.
Austrade EMDG
December 15, 2008 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Recently one our Australian Winery clients who uses Gourmet Ads to advertise their Australian wines in America told us about a government grant system called the export market development grant or EMDG. Administered by Austrade (Australian Trade Commission), the EMDG is a grant which supports Australian companies in their marketing activities offshore (or in market).
Every year the selection criteria for the EMDG changes, but principally this is how it works. Australian companies can apply for the grant at the Austrade website after they’ve spent the required amount to qualify for the grant (this year it’s A$10k). Then the amount over and above the threshold, the government will allow you to claim up to 50% of your approved in market spending each year for a period of up to 8 years.
The EMDG grant isnt just for wine companies, its for all Australian companies that are exporting. The benefit for Australian companies is once you’ve been accepted to receive the EMDG you can effectively increase your marketing by 50% giving you greater reach.
Make sure you checkout the Austrade website for selection criteria, visit www.austrade.gov.au/exportgrants/
