PBNJ Marketing Blog

 Ok, I need to disclose a personal part of me so the rest of this blog will make sense. My name is Cynthia and I am an online marketer; I’ve been in this space since 1996. I have lived through the pimentoloaf.com internet bubble, the obvious bubble burst, and the ups and downs that followed. I’m not an expert by any means but my professional career has grown around the internet.

When I moved to Costa Rica six years ago, I entered the internet stone age. I was used to paying all my bills online, doing my Christmas shopping online and even doing my job online. All of a sudden I was surrounded by paper bills, physically going and standing in lines to do my banking and pay my bills. High speed internet was not available outside of San Jose so ISDN was my best bet. Costa Rica has come a long way since then.

In the time I have lived here, doing business on the internet has evolved leaps and bounds. The banking system was the first to take the gigantic step towards gaining the confidence of the Costa Rican community, online marketplaces, blogs and now social media have followed. Businesses large and small realize that an internet presence is crucial so they are thousands of web pages are floating out there without a purpose. (Many haven’t discovered the magic of SEO yet)

My online initiatives have always been US driven buy in the last year I’ve  been turning my attention to Costa Rica. I have had the good fortune to meet many large business owners that are on board with the online initiative but not quite sure how to get it started. Their marketing firms are still green when it comes to online marketing so whatever they have done so far hasn’t produced large returns or no measurement has been achieved. Traditional media is adopting the call to action message to be .com related but those are few and far between.

With that being said, you can imagine my surprise to be going thru my google reader this am and coming across this article in Adage: Costa Rica’s Pilgrimage Goes Viral. The article spoke about Jotabequ’s online initiative to get people to do the pilgrimage to Cartago online. The idea was great, the site was interactive but why the heck did I not know about this site until 7 months after? I live in Costa Rica, I read the local papers; I am online everyday and nothing, nada until today. (By the way, congrats to Jotabequ for winning a local award for this initiative)

So this brings me to the conclusion that Costa Rica is missing the online buzz. The ideas are there but online road maps are not being laid out. Costa Rica is still stuck on traditional forms of media and ignoring the importance on advertising online, viral marketing and SEO. As veterans in this space, it is our responsibility to get this great country online and create a strong online Tico community. Educate businesses on the online potential that is slipping away day by day.

What have your experiences been doing business online in Costa Rica? What are you doing to instill confidence in within the Tico online community?

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What do you do when you can’t beat your competitor? You bring in the BIG guns. Microsoft recently added FarmVillle to its MSN family of games with the hopes of establishing a bigger presence on Facebook. The trick now was to let the 81 million monthly users of Farmville know that MSN has a home for FarmVille and that Bing is the search engine of choice.

As any mammoth company would do, they threw money at the problem, “farm cash” to be exact. Bing kicked off a Facebook “Fan” page and complimented it by running a sponsored ad on the bottom right of the FarmVille page. Their ad was simple, “become a fan of Bing on Facebook and receive three units of “farm cash””.

 Here are the stats from that campaign:

 12:40pm Tuesday – 8:11am Wednesday – Before the campaign started, Bing had 117,000 “fans”. By 8:11am on Wednesday that number rose to 539,000. As of recently, Bing’s “fan” page has 564,000 fans compared to 524,000 for Google’s fan page. According to AppData, 28.7 million people palyed FarmVille on Tuesday, giving this strategy a 1 to 2 percent click thru rate from players.

 Now that Bing has this fan base, the conversion strategy starts. Fan page postings include “find better tips for FarmVille on Bing” or their latest posting:

 Bing Any FarmVille fans out there? Try using Bing to get the most out of your crops and animals.

We’ve got great results to help you make better decisions in FarmVille.  binged.it

Microsoft’s Facebook strategy seems to be on the right track; getting fans involved through Facebook and getting them to try their decision making engine Bing.

As all of us tackle the social media maze, it’s refreshing to see huge players such as Microsoft tackle the social media market share dilemma one fan at a time, just like us little guys do.

If you had that kind of budget, would you have done anything different?

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I came across this interesting article on searchenginewatch.com and it brought up some great points about how to measure social media.  Once these tools become more mainstream, companies will be confident deploying social media strategies that can produce measurable results.  Below is an excerpt from their article:

“ As with most social media activity, the majority of interactions occur off your site, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t analyze your site’s social media referred visitor segment. To get the most value out of your analysis, you should break the segment into two sub-segments:

1. Social media referred visits that are attributed to your efforts.
2. Social media referred visits that are attributed to individuals outside your company.”

Once you have identified both segments, compile a list and identify which social media networks send the most traffic to your site. A second step would be to research other sites that might be just as beneficial and add them to the list.

You have completed your lists and you are ready to jump in. Fan pages and profiles are created, links pointing to a landing page or your website are set, but how do we measure? There are a number of social media monitoring tools out on the web that are free and on a paid subscription base that you can use:

FREE:
http://www.monitter.com
http://www.search.twitter.com
http://www.twendz.com
http://www.technorati.com

Google analytics – You can now use google analytics for your Facebook pages. (It’s not realtime as it takes a day to take off but its worth it)

FEE BASED:
http://www.radian6.com
http://www.collectiveintellect.com
http://www.techrigy.com

You can pick and chose which tool fits your needs best and apply them to your strategy. Not sure about where to start? Drop us a line and we can help you get your social media strategy started without breaking the bank.

If you would like to read the article in its entirety, click here.

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If you haven’t heard, Microsoft and Yahoo have been approved on a search and advertising deal announced last year. In a nutshell, Yahoo has agreed to use Microsoft’s algorithm for their search product. What does that mean exactly? Do I still optimize my website for all three search engines or do I just focus on Google and Bing? That seems to be the question of the hour according to many SEO professionals.

The project itself is in its infancy and there are a ton of details that need to be figured out. What elements will Yahoo keep for its search experience? What apps will they keep? Facebook and Flickr are huge apps for them so they will need to be integrated. As all these questions come up, one thing is clear, Yahoo will be powered by Bing but the user experience will be all Yahoo.

Even though we are talking about the “Big 3” en search engines, there are other contenders that are just as important. Did you know that YouTube is ranked number 2 in search? It would probably be a good idea to incorporate a video strategy to your search to capture some of that traffic.

So what other search engines are contenders? I have included a list below according to ComScore but among those listed, you will find Ask.com, AOL search (It is powered by Google but not necessarily provides the same results), craigslist even social media’s MySpace and Facebook.

Search is no longer up to the “Big 3” as people will search from the sites they spend the most time on. A well rounded search strategy needs to be more than just optimizing your website for Google, Yahoo and Bing. Incorporate social media and a video strategy to enhance search traffic to your website.

Do you have a search strategy? If so, who are the players that you optimize for?

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Seems like social media is not for the rock band, small business or celebrity anymore.A recent study by Burson-Marsteller showed that the 100 largest Fortune 500 companies are jumping into social media by using one or two social avenues while a smaller group is jumping in with all social media options. Companies seem to be settling in with some social channels more than others, even though there is still a learning curve on how to get the most out of them. Twitter is the leader of the pack with 54%, Facebook 29% and corporate blogs 32%. 20% of those 100 Fortune 500 companies are using all of the social media options mentioned.

This is still unchartered territory as many companies don’t know how to measure these channels or are not clear on what exactly they are getting from it. Many Fortune 500 companies are seeing positive results from their Facebook Fan Page and Twitter strategies. Corporate blogs are still around providing fresh content but are being updated 7 or 8 times a month on average.

So, after all those statistics, what have Fortune 500 companies learned about social media? Social media is becoming the “gauge of the people”, a real time suggestion box where the consumer will be heard using a plethora of social media options. You don’t have to wait anymore to see how well your product did or how your latest ad campaign is doing; just ask the masses, they are only a post away.

The million dollar question is: Is there a downside to this real time communication? Could social media become a niche for a specific size of company? So far, small and medium companies are benefiting from the unlimited resources of free advertising using creativity and out of the box thinking. Also, traditional media is financially acquired (Fortune 500 companies with their multi million dollar Ad budgets) while social media is dominated by content. (Free, free and free) That means that the smallest contender can become a giant among the masses and take some of the limelight away from these massive ad campaigns with some savvy content and a fresh point of view.

By no means am I saying that Fortune 500 companies are doomed when it comes to social media but the rules of the game are changing. Can these companies adjust, learn and succeed at the rate of change? Stay tuned…

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In the search engine marketing world, competition is fierce as companies fight for first page ranking on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Businesses look daily for web intelligence studies to help them through this process and when I come across one, I like to pass it on.
In a recent study done by Compete, a leading web analytics company, it was found that 94% percent of online shoppers do research before making their final purchase and 61% of online shoppers often use search engines. It was found that for apparel, 12% used search engines for their purchases. Shoppers relied on email marketing, branding (going to the brand’s website directly) and catalogs. Technology driven products i.e. cell phones, laptops, electronic devices, etc. do require more research from the consumer therefore the percentage of search engine usage rises to 45%.
Another interesting find is that more than 80 million consumers use comparison shopping sites such as Cnet and Yahoo Shopping for their online purchases. Many enjoy the product reviews and also the price comparison feature which is a big plus in these tough economic times.
With studies such as the one mentioned above, it is becoming easier for online retailers to identify where their marketing dollars should go. It is always a great feeling to see my clients excited about their investment results when our marketing research is dead on. To read more about this study, click here.

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PBNJ is looking for someone with knowledge working with integrating an online ordering system with ‘Pasarela de Pagos Comercio Electronico’ from Banco Nacional in Costa Rica.  This would be a contract job where you would assist the web designer/developer in configuring that interface.  Please contact me at robert@pbnjmarketing.com if you have interest and I can give you more information on the job.

Thanks..

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PBNJ Marketing is proud to show off our new website and our new blog.  It’s funny we have been so busy working, upgrading, and tweaking all of our client’s website, we completely left ours along for more than a year.

But as I was sitting with a little bit of time on my hands, I decided to just update our site and add a few more things and make a little big more clearer and clean.  I hope that all of you like it.  Please let us know what you think.

Thank you,

Robert Maldonado

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