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The Internet is a tricky promotion vehicle. Its reach is massive, but often unfocused. And you can only blast so many display ads before people lose interest. But there are ways to get around the hard sell and still promote your message. One of the latest techniques is the blog--or weblog.
Most blogs are a complete waste of time. They're often personal labours of love, heavy on personality and light on useful content. Yet business is increasingly enamoured with the idea of blogs as thinly disguised marketing vehicles. Take the Phoenix Suns of the National Basketball Association, home to Canadian superstar guard Steve Nash. Like many businesses considering a blog, the Suns wanted to raise the organization's profile with its customers. It wanted to present an inside look of the entire organization, with a variety of players, dancers, commentators, trainers and other team personnel expressing opinions, but still convey the right marketing message. "We're always trying to do things that other teams aren't--and experiment with new online initiatives," says Jeramie McPeek, vice-president of interactive services with the Suns. "A blog would give us a chance to communicate to our fans in a number of different ways from different voices within the organization."
Of course, those voices are carefully vetted to ensure nothing untoward leaks out. That process is handled by a workflow and permissions structure developed by Marqui Inc., a tiny Vancouver company that adapts marketing strategies for the Internet. You may recall Marqui generated a firestorm of controversy two years ago, when it paid bloggers to hype the company. This rankled purists, who saw blogs as a last bastion of neutrality. For most organizations, though, blogs represent a more "humane" way of getting the message out, says Dale Borland, president and CEO of Marqui. "A massive amount of organizations don't know how to do that and continue to have trouble harnessing the web."
Sports businesses are obvious blog candidates, because their customers tend to be fans who are, well, fanatical in their pursuit of information. But Borland says certain corporations with rabid followers (such as Microsoft or Google) or strong business leaders are worthy, too. For example, a blog by Jack Welch or Warren Buffett would garner a lot of interest if it revealed what they cope with day-to-day, "rather than what we hear about from the canned communications we get from their organizations," says Borland.
The trick, though, is realizing that blogging's return on investment is less straightforward than the ROI of traditional marketing techniques (which is un-straightforward enough). A well-run and frequently updated blog encourages repeat web visits and garners more feedback from surfers. Hopefully, that translates into more sales or customer loyalty--and you can make money from third-party sponsorships. For example, the Suns site has a sponsoring advertiser in Bud Light.
Ad spending on social media outlets such as blogs, podcasts and web feeds is expected to jump 145%, to about US$50 million in 2006, according to research firm PQ Media LLC; blogging is expected to account for US$36.2 million of that total. That's peanuts compared to even the estimated $525 million spent on web ads in Canada this year. Still, it shows businesses are interested in alternative media, which offer the ability to reach a younger demographic and are far more user-engaging than traditional ad buys. By 2010, PQ Media estimates total advertising on blogs, podcasts and RSS will hit US$757 million, a compound annual growth rate of more than 100%, starting from 2005.
With minimal technology costs, blogs are remarkably cheap--and easy to set up--but they shouldn't be taken lightly. They require consistent updates, and the company has to believe in having a more open, two-way dialogue with customers. "It's not simply a new technology that you toss onto the corporate website and hope it works," says Carmi Levy, senior research analyst with Info-Tech Research Group, an IT research firm in London, Ont. "It demands a fundamental shift in how you approach your marketing efforts, because now the message has to be personal, and it has to be managed on a personal basis." Most corporations aren't ready to go down that road--yet.
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