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A series exploring Catholic principles for advertising

The Pontifical Council for Social Communications’ document, Ethics in Advertising, provides a useful ethical frame of reference for individuals and organizations, regardless of their religious affiliation. The report looks at the profound impact of advertising – harms and benefits – and highlights moral principles and norms that can help to ensure its impact is positive rather than negative.

As for the benefits of advertising, the document discusses economic benefits, cultural benefits, benefits of political advertising and moral and religious benefits.

I’d like to take a closer look at the cultural benefits of advertising by quoting from that section of the document:
” Because of the impact advertising has on media that depend on it for revenue, advertisers have an opportunity to exert a positive influence on decisions about media content. This they do by supporting material of excellent intellectual, aesthetic and moral quality presented with the public interest in view, and particularly by encouraging and making possible media presentations which are oriented to minorities whose needs might otherwise go unserved.”

“Moreover, advertising can itself contribute to the betterment of society by uplifting and inspiring people and motivating them to act in ways that benefit themselves and others. Advertising can brighten lives simply by being witty, tasteful and entertaining. Some advertisements are instances of popular art, with a vivacity and elan all their own.”

There are, therefore, two primary cultural benefits according to Ethics in Advertising, the first of which is the impact advertising has on supporting quality media content with the public interest in view.

This is a point worth considering for organizations who are only thinking of advertising as a means of self- or brand-promotion. The best advertising, if aligned with Catholic principles, is always done with the public interest, hopefully served by the media where the ads appear, in mind.

As an advertiser, you have the opportunity to be a patron of the common good – through the media outlets your ad dollars support.

A brief introduction to digital advertising impression viewability and how it works

This video explains how viewability works.

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The StoryBrand framework can transform your marketing

Everyone loves a good story. What if you could make use of the power of storytelling in your digital marketing and advertising, to communicate more clearly and effectively? What if doing so could help you get better results? The video below provides a great introduction to the power of the StoryBrand framework to help you do exactly that.

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Unrealistic expections and poor planning top the list

Over the last ten years, I’ve had the opportunity to work on digital ad campaigns for universities, book publishers, films, charities, and local businesses. In that time, I’ve made my share of mistakes and learned lessons from those mistakes along the way. Here are five of the many mistakes I made and the lessons you can learn from them.

• Unrealistic Expectations

  This is number one for a reason. When I first started planning and executing digital ad campaigns, I expected that the ads would result in immediate sales. I thought the process went something like this: 1. See an ad. 2. Click on the ad. 3. Buy the product promoted in the ad. That’s direct response advertising, right? I learned the hard way that it doesn’t quite work like that. Not by a long shot. Getting results from advertising takes extensive planning, effective creative and repeat exposure. Although the tactics of digital advertising are vastly different from offline advertising, the fundamentals – despite what others may say – remain the same.

• Poor Planning

  Speaking of planning, with most of my campaigns, I only had a Plan A and typically that was to sell something like a book or a ticket to an event or a donation opportunity. The reality is that most people don’t click…

Read this post in its entirety at https://www.catholicmarketing.com/content/873884/1/top-5-digital-advertising-mistakes-and-lessons-learned

Three tips to Boost Banner Ad Performance

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Canva is somewhat similar to bannersnack but does not allow you to create fully animated html5 banner ads. Instead, canva allows you to create more simple gif animations. The main issue you will run into when using Canva is that the file size of the gif animations you create will be larger than the recommended 100 – 150 KB file weight for display ads. This file weight issue is the main reason, advertisers have moved toward html5 animations which are able to pack Flash-like animation into very small file sizes. As for Flash, it is no longer an option for display ads since modern browsers no longer support the display of flash ads.

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If you need help with design and development, VMR can definitely do it very quickly and effectively. Or we can provide banner design consulting to give you feedback and suggestions to improve your designs in accordance with your brand guidelines.

Avoid the rabbit hole of Sales CRO

It sounds simple enough but it’s easier said than done: If you want to drive optimal conversion results for a digital ad campaign, focus on the factors that will help you deliver those conversion results. In digital advertising, like it or not, the most important factor affecting results couldn’t be simpler. It’s traffic and non-sales conversion events, not sales conversions.

Read the rest on Medium here.

Inbound marketing pioneer Paul Roetzer was kind enough to join me on Blog Talk Radio last week. Paul is the founder and CEO of PR 20/20 and the author of the recently published book The Marketing Agency Blueprint: The Handbook for Building Hybrid PR, SEO, Content, Advertising, and Web Firm (Wiley)  (Affiliate Link).  Paul also happens to be someone I genuinely admire […] The post Inbound Marketing Pioneer, Hubspot Expert On Blog Talk Radio appeared first on VMR. Inbound Marketing Pioneer, Hubspot Expert On Blog Talk Radio was first posted on March 23, 2012 at 1:51 am.©2015 “VMR”. Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at hugh@vmrcommunications.com

Inbound marketing pioneer Paul Roetzer was kind enough to join me on Blog Talk Radio last week. Paul is the founder and CEO of PR 20/20  and the author of the recently published book  The Marketing Agency Blueprint: The Handbook for Building Hybrid PR, SEO, Content, Advertising, and Web Firm (Wiley)    (Affiliate Link).   Paul also happens to be someone I genuinely admire for his hybrid marketing and PR acumen, his business savvy and his generosity to his profession. He is most defintely worth watching. And listening to. With regard to the latter, if you have a minute or two, listen in to my conversation with Paul from last Friday for the sort of brilliant, practical insights on inbound marketing you will only find from someone who has walked the walk as Paul Roetzer and his firm PR 20/20 most definitely have. Feel free to share your thoughts regarding the interview as well. You know I will be listening…to you!

internet radio

Hugh Macken Live

The post Inbound Marketing Pioneer, Hubspot Expert On Blog Talk Radio appeared first on VMR.

Inbound Marketing Pioneer, Hubspot Expert On Blog Talk Radio

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The co-author, with Brian Solis, of the highly acclaimed “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations” joins VMR’s Hugh Macken on Blog Talk Radio. The post “PR At a Crossroads” Executive & Author to discuss PR’s Expanding Role in the Realms of Marketing and Branding. appeared first on VMR. “PR At a Crossroads” Executive & Author to discuss PR’s Expanding Role in the Realms of Marketing and Branding. was first posted on March 6, 2010 at 10:34 pm.©2015 “VMR”. Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at hugh@vmrcommunications.com

The co-author, with Brian Solis, of the highly acclaimed “ Putting the

Public Back in Public Relations “, Deirdre Breakenridge joins VMR ‘s Hugh Macken on Blog Talk Radio for an exclusive interview on how social media is re-inventing and renewing Public Relations. You may listen live here.

Also please anonymously suggest question you would like me to ask during the interview by submitting suggestions here: http://vmr.slinkset.com

The live listener call-in # is 347-884-8912.

Says Seth Godin, Author of Tribes ,: “There will be two kinds of PR professionals in the future: those who read this book and get with the program, and the unemployed. Your choice.”

Ms. Breakenridge is President, Director of Communications at Mango! Marketing. A veteran in the PR industry, Breakenridge leads a creative team of PR and marketing executives. She counsels senior level executives at companies including RCN Metro Optical Networks, JVC, Michael C. Fina and Kraft.

Breakenridge is an adjunct professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey and is the author of three Financial Times business books.

Breakenridge has spoken publicly on the topics of PR, online marketing and brand building for the Public Relations Society of America(PRSA), The National Association of Broadcasters(NAB), and other organizations.

The post “PR At a Crossroads” Executive & Author to discuss PR’s Expanding Role in the Realms of Marketing and Branding. appeared first on VMR.

“PR At a Crossroads” Executive & Author to discuss PR’s Expanding Role in the Realms of Marketing and Branding.

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Some may have missed an important event in the ongoing battle for social media monitoring and engagement platform leadership:  Late last month, Radian6 announced that Tien Tzuo, chief executive officer of Zuora, and former Chief Strategy Officer and CMO for salesforce.com had joined the Radian6 board of directors. I’ve decided to comment on this news because […] The post Sales Execs, CMOs Take Note: Former Salesforce CMO joins Radian6 Board to Advise on Strategy appeared first on VMR. Sales Execs, CMOs Take Note: Former Salesforce CMO joins Radian6 Board to Advise on Strategy was first posted on March 3, 2010 at 1:32 pm.©2015 “VMR”. Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at hugh@vmrcommunications.com

Some may have missed an important event in the ongoing battle for social media monitoring and engagement platform leadership:  Late last month, Radian6 announced that Tien Tzuo, chief executive officer of  Zuora, and former Chief Strategy Officer and CMO for salesforce.com had joined the Radian6 board of directors.

I’ve decided to comment on this news because I believe it signals a strategic adjustment in focus for Radian6 and a harbinger of increased market demand by sales executives for social media engagement technology that measures results from lead to close and interfaces seamlessly with CRM plaforms like salesforce.com.

Mr. Tzuo knows from experience that sales executives care about measurable sales results (that means dollars, pesos, Euros, Yen, etc…) more so than anyone else in an organization aside from the C-Suite. And they want a way to measure results in dollar terms. Now they want a way to see how social media engagement is increasing their sales from the time that first tweet is sent to the time their new customer signs on the dotted line.

If anyone has a good sense as to how to successfully attack that problem strategically, and within a SaaS framework, it would appear to be Mr. Tzuo.

A Stanford University and Cornell University alumnus, Tzuo joined Salesforce.com as employee 11 in 1999 and was one of the “original forces.” He held a variety of executive roles during his nine years there, eventually serving as its chief marketing officer and chief strategy officer. He personally oversaw the vision, direction and design of Salesforce’s award winning product line, helping to grow the firm into a multi-billion dollar company and one of the most successful Software-as-a-Service ( SaaS) companies to date.

Not surprisingly, Radian6 CEO Marcel LeBrun is on cloud nine (no pun intended):

Says Tzuo:

Seriously, though, think of the Iphone of the sales and customer service world and that’s what you have with salesforce.com. It is now the leading enterprise cloud-computing company in the world for customer relationship management(CRM). Companies like Dell, the Wall Street Journal, NBC Universal, SprintNextel and others have all jumped on the Salesforce bandwagon.

But check out this quote from Sprint Nextel which appears on Salesforce’s website:

I think that this signals an important evolution in the  social media monitoring and engagement platform space. At least at the Enterprise level, Marketing, PR, Customer Service and the C-Suite are all on board with the fact that they can’t ignore the conversations that are occurring online. They need to AT LEAST listen using a platform like ScoutLabs or Radian6.

But sales execs have been relatively slow to pick up on the value of social media for lead generation and closing deals largely because of the difficulty in tracking ROI and lead to close ratios. I suspect, perhaps incorrectly, that LeBrun and co. recognize this fact and are expecting increased demand from sales-minded organizations that are now (1) demanding currency denominated ROI metrics across the board and (2) really want to bring their sales teams into the mix as well.

Again, I could be totally off the mark in my assessment regarding increased demand from sales executives in particular in 2010. I’d love some of my readers to tell me if they agree or disagree and why.

I just believe that bringing Mr. Tzuo “on board” (again, no pun intended) increases the odds that Radian6 will deliver the goods that will be most in demand by CMOs and sales executives:  a Monitoring, ROI Measurement and Engagement platform that will integrate seamlessly with a company’s CRM platform and that will be palatable to sales teams. A platform not only suited for marketing and customer service but also for sales.

I think this marks the beginning of a new chapter for enterprise class sales team adoption of social technologies.

And you? What do you think? Are there monitoring solutions out there that already do a good job of measuring social media engagement ROI? Which platforms work best for sales executives? Am I overestimating the significance of this move by Radian6? Reading more into it than necessary? I’d love to hear your comments.

And as always, I will be listening!

The post Sales Execs, CMOs Take Note: Former Salesforce CMO joins Radian6 Board to Advise on Strategy appeared first on VMR.

Sales Execs, CMOs Take Note: Former Salesforce CMO joins Radian6 Board to Advise on Strategy

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