How B2B Marketers Can Succeed on the 6 Big Social Networks

It's easy to think of ways to use social media for B2C marketing. But many B2B marketers, while noting the importance of social media, have still struggled to find their footing in the social media marketing game. What are you supposed to do, throw Farmville sheep at your leads until they realize they do, in fact, need your product or service?

Alright, you probably haven't gotten that desperate, but MarketingProfs did shed some light on the issue earlier this week in its post about going B2B on social sites, and I think the topic deserves some serious attention. In fact, eMarketer reports that 52% of US small businesses don't feel they are marketed to by other businesses effectively, while 46% feel they're being "sold" to instead of "spoken" to. You know what a great solution for that problem is? Social media! You know, where you are "social" with people instead of pushing the hard sell?

So this post will break down how you can be successful on the 6 most popular social networks: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, and Pinterest. Some won't be too much of a stretch for you, but I think you'll be surprised at the potential available with others!

LinkedIn for B2B Marketers

Did you know that LinkedIn is 277% more effective for lead generation than Facebook and Twitter? If you're a B2B marketer, this certainly shouldn't surprise you -- of all the social networks listed in this blog post, LinkedIn provides the most natural transition into social media for many B2B organizations. That's because it's a social network made specifically for professionals! So to ease you into this B2B social media program, I thought it'd be best to start with the social network that has the most natural B2B applications. Check out these ways you can use LinkedIn in your B2B marketing!

1) Share your presentation slides. You already have tons of great content living in your various slide decks, and you don't have a lot of time to create new lead gen content. Why not add a call-to-action in those slides, repurpose them as lead generation content, and share it on LinkedIn? They've actually made it pretty easy for you to do, too. LinkedIn has a SlideShare app called SlideShare Presentations that lets you easily import presentations from your SlideShare account and share the content with LinkedIn members!

2) Get more visibility for your blog with an RSS feed. Visitors to your company page should be greeted with quality content from your business, and LinkedIn makes it easy by letting you provide an RSS of your most recent company blog posts. Use this to drive traffic back to your blog from LinkedIn!

3) Promote new content with company status updates. Your blog's RSS isn't the only way to get your content out to the masses on LinkedIn. Your company status update is a simple way to broadcast your latest and greatest content -- but for some reason, so many companies are neglecting to leverage the functionality. At HubSpot, we update our LinkedIn company status 4 times a day, each time publishing either a new blog post, or a lead generation offer. That way we can, you know, drive traffic to our website and generate leads. (Bonus Tip: If your blog runs on WordPress, LinkedIn has a WordPress app that lets you automatically publish the posts you publish on your blog to your LinkedIn profile, and instantly notify your LinkedIn network of the new post.)

4) Highlight your products/services to a targeted audience. LinkedIn provides dedicated tabs on your company page on which you can promote your products and services. I mean, that right there is one thing you should check off your social media marketing to-do list if you're not already leveraging the space. But you can take it a step further by creating different variations of the tabs and targeting them to your different buyer personas. That means you can adjust your messaging and value proposition for each audience, then target based on information like company size, industry, geographic location, job function, and seniority level! If you need help creating these targeted tabs, take a look at this blog post for an in-depth explanation.

5) Generate leads on your products/services tab. If targeting wasn't enough to excite you, you can actually generate leads on your products/services tab by creating clickable banners (called the Product and Service Spotlight) to fill the space provided. Or if leads aren't your primary goal, get creative! Create a banner that promotes your next event, or you could even work on generating more subscribers for your blog. You can also combine this with the targeting feature we just discussed to create up to three variations of the banner so you can achieve greater relevancy.

6) Email your LinkedIn Group members. If you're managing a group on LinkedIn -- perhaps you've established a group for your industry or trade like we've done with our Inbound Marketers Group -- you can send an email to those group members promoting your latest marketing initiative. LinkedIn allows you to send one email per week to your group.

7) Keep your blog fed using LinkedIn Answers. We've written an entire blog post about how to use LinkedIn Answers to improve your marketing; that's how cool the feature is! LinkedIn Answers is a place for people to ask and answer questions, which provides for great thought leadership opportunity and lets you network with industry influencers. Plus, you can promote your own content when answering others' questions, use the questions people commonly ask as topic fodder for your own blog, and even identify guest bloggers who can do some writing for you!

8) Conduct market research using LinkedIn polls. Did you know that LinkedIn has a polling feature? They do, and the best part of it is, it's so insanely simple to use.

Just type in your question, the answer options, the duration of the poll's run time, and hit 'Share.' You can even publish it to Twitter (which you'll certainly be using after you read about Twitter's B2B uses later in this post)! You can post these polls in your own LinkedIn group, or in another group for some seriously niche market research, provided they haven't restricted the functionality to admins only.

Pinterest for B2B Marketers

Okay, maybe LinkedIn was obvious for B2B marketers (though I hope you still got some new ideas to try), but Pinterest? What should I do, pin pictures of puppies and wedding dresses? How on earth does a B2B organization use Pinterest to feed its marketing machine? Like this.

1) Pin pictures of your product. Yes, even if your product is "boring." If you haven't taken a gander at General Electric's Pinterest boards yet, head over there for some inspiration! Not all of their boards are product-focused though -- they've actually done a great job leveraging user-generated content with their #GEInspiredMe campaign -- but they also have fun product-oriented boards like 'Badass Machines,' 'GE Garages,' and 'From the Factory Floor.' Showing their product in many different lights gives them the opportunity to gain market share with engineers, historians, and artists with their Pinterest boards, not all of whom would give two hoots about their brand in other circumstances.

2) Pin infographics, data, and charts. But my B2B organization doesn't have a product; we're service-oriented! No prob. Visual content is huge in marketing these days! If you're creating any sort of visual content -- infographics, data visualizations, charts and graphs, even industry cartoons -- you should create pinboards for them on your Pinterest account. For an example, take a look at HubSpot's 'Marketing Infographics' board on Pinterest. And yes, we are a B2B organization! (Bonus Tip: Be sure to add a Pin It button next to visual content on your website and blog, too, so your visitors can do some of your Pinterest social sharing for you!)

3) Pin covers of printed books and ebooks. If you're creating your own lead generation ebooks, writing printed books, or just want to promote great content written by others, you can pin the covers of those books to dedicated pinboards as well. If you're pinning ebooks, link the images to a landing page dedicated to that ebook so you can generate leads. If you're pinning written books, link the images to a page (like Amazon) on which a visitor could buy that book so you're actually generating revenue from your efforts.

4) Drive traffic to your website. With each pin, you have the ability to also post a link back to your website (or elsewhere, if you choose). That way, when someone oohs and aahs over a pin of your latest infographic, they can click back to your website to find it along with, say, the accompanying blog post you wrote when you published it. In HubSpot's own Pinterest experiments, we've found that having many boards with many pins is the best way to drive traffic back to your site. In a two week time period, a single pin only sent a bit of traffic to our site, but the whole of our pins combined sent tremendous amounts! Take a look for yourself.

5) Generate leads from pins. Because you're an awesome B2B inbound marketer (still trying to find the ROI in social, of course), you know all that pin traffic you're generating is useless if you don't actually convert it into leads. Luckily, you can generate leads from Pinterest, too! When choosing the link to associate with each pin, consider choosing a relevant landing page instead of just any web page. For example, we might pull a graph from our 2012 State of Inbound Marketing report, pin it, and then link back to the landing page where the report can be redeemed in order to turn that pin traffic into a lead. And if the image you're pinning doesn't have a landing page associated with it, be sure to include well-optimized calls-to-action on the page to which you're driving traffic to increase the likelihood that Pinterest traffic converts.

Twitter for B2B Marketers

From purely anecdotal research, Twitter seems to be a bit of a polarizing entity. Some have sworn their sole allegiance to the tiny blue bird, while others think the stream is cluttered, unwieldy, and totally useless. While I have my own opinions for my personal use, this is business we're talking about, and there is certainly tremendous potential to enhance your B2B marketing initiatives on Twitter. Let's learn how!

1) Grow your reach. Technically, all of these social networks will help you grow your reach. But Twitter is the easiest way to do it at a high volume, so instead of telling you about it for every social media network, I'm going to focus on it here. But you can apply these principles to every social network you use!

Think of reach like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon for social media. It's the idea that your content and influence extends beyond your first degree connections. Sure, they're part of your reach, but so are their connections, and even their connections' connections! It's important because it gets more eyes on your traffic and lead generating content, and gives you more street cred with Google's algorithm. That's right, the more people that share your content, the more authoritative Google believes you are! So follow others on Twitter, and several times a day tweet the blog posts you write, your lead generating offers, and other peoples' content. If you do this regularly, you will expand your Twitter reach and get more eyes on the content that makes your marketing successful. I guarantee it.

2) Ask employees to tweet your content. You can spearhead your company's Twitter marketing alone, or you can amplify the results by getting your entire company involved. This is how you can take Twitter reach to the next level. Let's use HubSpot as a case study. We encourage all of our employees to maintain an active social media presence. As such, an overwhelming percentage of HubSpotters are on Twitter. And you know what happens every time we, say, write a blog post? Hundreds of people tweet about it. And you know what that does? It gets their networks of hundreds and thousands seeing, reading, and retweeting that content, too ... and it takes a matter of seconds to accomplish. Starting to see the potential with Twitter, yet?

3) Grow blog subscribers. Since you'll already be tweeting about your blog content on a regular basis, why not leverage the power of Twitter to also increase your number of blog subscribers? Create a dedicated landing page just for signing up blog subscribers, and use Twitter to publicize the landing page, ideally after you've just tweeted some amazing blog content that helps you make your case!

4) Generate leads on Twitter, too! Yes, you can also generate leads on Twitter. In fact, we've written an entire guide to generating leads on Twitter, specifically for B2B organizations, too! Not only can you craft tweets with your lead generating offers and links to landing pages, but you can also customize your Twitter background with calls-to-action, and even monitor for competitive and industry search terms to find prospects that are looking for your solution in real time.

5) Host a Twitter chat. Although currently on hiatus, HubSpot has hosted several Twitter chats that help us generate leads, grow our reach, interact with our community, and expand our thought leadership. Twitter chats are virtual meetings on Twitter, held together by a common hashtag -- ours is #inboundchat, for example. If you're interested in holding your own Twitter chat.

6) Solve customer service issues in real time. Even if you don't want them to, people will use social media as an outlet to air their grievances. You can either be proactive about engaging in that conversation, or let the Negative Nancies control the conversation. We recommend the former. And Twitter is an ideal platform for this because it works in real time! Either set up a separate social media account dedicated to customer service, or simply monitor your Twitter account for problems that may arise, and quickly route them to the appropriate person for a resolution.

7) Use hashtags to generate buzz around live events. If you're hosting an event, use hashtags to communicate on Twitter so attendees can all engage in one conversation together. Not only will their networks see all of the buzz around your event (remember the concept of reach!), but your attendees will also be able to network, and you'll get real-time feedback from attendees about your event.

YouTube for B2B Marketers

YouTube doesn't always get a lot of air time in social media marketing discussions, perhaps because not all marketers are equipped with the ability to easily create high quality videos ... or perhaps because you feel like you have nothing to create a video about. While we understand these hurdles, there are still some great ways to use YouTube for those B2B marketers who do have the bandwidth to create video. If you're creating videos for your B2B marketing now, or you plan to in the future, make sure you leverage YouTube in the following ways to make it successful.

1) Publish case studies. You might have case study videos on your website -- we certainly do! Why not create a YouTube account for your company that features those videos, as well? Remember, videos show up in search results, too, and don't forget about who owns YouTube. Their name rhymes with Shmoogle.

2) Take product tours. Case studies aren't the only quality video content a B2B company can create. If you're a product-oriented business, you can also use a video to take your prospects on a little tour that's more engaging than simply reading some copy about what you create. And don't tell me it's too boring ... we create marketing software and found a way to shoot videos showcasing our product! And then, just like your case study videos, upload those bad boys to YouTube, and be sure to promote them via your other social media channels for maximum visibility.

3) Create how-to videos. But I'm not a product-oriented business! That's fine! Your prospects and customers still have problems then need solved, and questions they need answered. Be the person to do that via video! We do this all the time when we get questions that end up being really hard to explain in writing -- this video that shows you how to analyze Facebook Insights is our most recent example that required no special technology to shoot. Oh yeah, it also lives on our YouTube channel, and in two weeks has already received over 2,500 views (and counting). (Bonus Tip: To get more views for your videos, write a blog post that summarizes the content contained therein, and embed the video within the post!)

4) Optimize your YouTube videos for search. Like I mentioned, YouTube videos show up in organic search engine results. So if you're at all concerned with SEO (what inbound marketer isn't?), YouTube is an important part of your strategy. And there's a way to optimize the videos you upload to YouTube that will give you a leg up on your competition, too! Visit this blog post for the full YouTube optimization rundown.

5) And yes, you can generate leads on YouTube, too! I'm starting to sound like a broken record on this social media lead generation, aren't I? But many marketers really are surprised to learn there's lead generation potential on YouTube, and it's because it requires a little creativity. At the end of every video you create, include a call-to-action and landing page URL to direct visitors back to your website to redeem an offer germane to the subject of the video. You can also include links to landing pages in the video description section on YouTube, and if you want to put a little paid muscle behind your videos, experiment with CTAs using YouTube's overlay ads!

Google+ for B2B Marketers

I know I said Twitter was a polarizing entity, but maybe I should have reserved a little of that sentiment for Google+, too. Despite all of the hoopla surrounding the launch of Google+ brand pages last fall, many marketers have resisted spending time on the social network. We've even written a blog post evaluating whether it really is worth your time. But even if you're not a believer (hey, not every social network is right for every marketer), there is still plenty of potential for B2B marketers. If you decide to spend some time marketing your business on Google+, here's how you can do it successfully!

1) Livestream a Hangout! Just this week, Google+ finally started rolling out Hangouts on Air to everyone. That means you can easily hang out with up to 9 people using the video function on Google+, and you can livestream the hangout for all the world to see. How do B2B marketers get some leverage out of this? You're limited only by your creativity, but we also provided a great tutorial along some great ways to put it to use here, which include company announcements, webinars, industry expert roundtable discussions or interviews, virtual conferences, livestreaming in-person events, user groups, and Q&A sessions.

2) Use Circles to target your content. Many B2B marketers are reticent to join social networks because they don't want to bother people with content that isn't relevant to their entire audience. After all, you might have multiple product and service lines that overlap barely, if at all! But Google+ has helped remedy this with Google+ Circles. Circles allow your followers to identify what type of content they are interested in, so instead of blanketing your entire follower base with content that is only relevant to just a fraction, you can publish content to specific Circles that contain followers interested in that subject matter.

3) Get your content more visibility in search. Just as your YouTube videos can show up in organic search results, your content can also get much more organic search visibility using Google+, since Google started incorporating content shared on its social network into the SERPs. As such, you should add the +1 button to the content on your site so others can share it with just the push of a button, and begin sharing your content regularly via Google+ status updates to increase the likelihood you appear in organic search results for related search terms.

Facebook for B2B Marketers

I thought I'd leave the sheep-thrower for last.
Facebook: the one that started it all! It was once just for college students, then it expanded to the rest of Generation Y, and now your grandma is friend requesting you. And you know what? B2B marketers shouldn't be missing out on it! Here's how you can turn what started as a friend-to-friend social network into a business-to-business one.

1) Generate leads. If you read the entirety of this post, you shouldn't be surprised that you can generate leads on Facebook, too. Yes, you can publish links to lead gen offers to do it. But there's one method that's unique to Facebook that should also be mentioned! With the new Facebook Timeline rollout, while you cannot include calls-to-action in your cover photo, you can include them in the "Views & Apps" section of your page, right under the cover photo! Take a look at how B2B company Distilled did this on its Facebook page to help generate more leads. (Bonus Tip: You can also use this section to get more visibility for your blog or apps you've created for your business!)

2) Optimize for lead generation with pins and stars. When you do publish your lead generation content to your Timeline, get it even more visibility using pins and stars. Pins allow you to anchor one update to the top of your Timeline for up to 7 days, and stars have the effect of expanding the update so that it takes up more of your Timeline real estate, drawing more eyes to the lead generation offer. This not only results in more leads, but also more engagement from Facebook fans, which is crucial to getting your updates into users' news feeds, according to Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm.

3) Build an industry community. Now that you know how to generate leads for your business on Facebook, consider building an industry community to convert! The B2B community is full of people trying to be better, faster, and stronger than their fellow employees, higher-ups, and industry competition. Establish your Facebook page as the place to get the information that will help them do that. Publish educational content from yourself and others, publish new research (you can even publish those fancy charts and graphs you created for your Pinterest boards!), and pose provocative questions that will get your audience thinking and talking. If your Facebook fans recognize you as the go-to place for information in your industry, they will eventually become your customer or refer others your way -- because you're the best out there!

4) Use Facebook for networking. LinkedIn isn't the only social network that can help you expand your professional network. B2B organizations often rely on in-person events like conferences and trade shows to network with the right people, and Facebook's location-based services can make you even more successful in these endeavors. Next time you attend an event, promote your presence by checking in on Foursquare, Facebook Places, or your other favorite location-based service so others within your Facebook network are alerted to your presence. What a great way to not only stand out from the crowd, but also find others to connect with (many that you may have only spoken to through your Facebook Timeline until this point)!

5) Make use of Open Graph. You know when you see an update that says, "Bobby McGee read 10 Reasons Lady Gaga and Newt Gingrich Should Get Married on The Washington Post" and you are prompted to let an app access your profile before you can read the article? That's a result of Open Graph, which has allowed third-party developers to create apps that show a user's engagement with the app on Facebook. Develop an app of your own to get your brand more visibility on Facebook. You could create a customer testimonial app, a customer achievements app, a content library app to promote your amazing content, or even a free trial app to get customers using your product!

6) Create Facebook coupons. You may have heard that Facebook is testing coupons with ecommerce and brick-and-mortar businesses. If your B2B falls into one of those two buckets, soon you'll be able to not only create coupons for your customers on Facebook, but also leverage Facebook advertising to pay for more visibility for those offers!

I'm certain there are more B2B applications for marketing on each of these social networks; share your ideas in the comments!
























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How to Use Hashtags on Twitter: A Simple Guide for Marketers

Every time we host live webinars (and as this long list suggests, that is quite often), quite a few attendees get confused about what to do with the hashtag we provide. What is it? What does it do? How do you create one? Let me explain!

What is a hashtag?

A Twitter hashtag is simply a keyword phrase, spelled out without spaces, with a pound sign (#) in front of it. For example, #inboundchat and #ILoveChocolate are both hashtags.

What does a hashtag do?

A Twitter hashtag ties the conversations of different users into one stream, which you can find by searching the hastag in Twitter Search or by using a third-party monitoring tool such as HootSuite.

So, if Twitter users who are not otherwise connected talk about the same topic using a specific hashtag, their tweets will appear in the same stream. In that way, Twitter hashtags solve a coordination issue and facilitate a conversation. Popular hashtagged words often become trending topics -- topics so many people are talking about that they are a "trend."

Hashtags are great for centralizing conversations around live, in-person events or conferences, live webinars, or other marketing campaigns you're running.

How do you create a hashtag?

Contrary to what you might think, you don’t need any tools to create a hashtag. Hashtags are simply text, and they can be placed in the beginning, middle, or end of a tweet. Just decide on the keyword you are targeting, place a pound sign in front of it, and you are all set! See the image below for an example:

Although Twitter hashtags are quick and easy to create, there are some traps you can fall into if you're new to creating them. Let’s look at these possible pitfalls and some best practices to keep in mind if you're thinking of creating one to support your marketing efforts.

Best Practices for Using Twitter Hashtags

1) Check If It’s New

After you decide on a keyword or a phrase, search for it. Visit Search.Twitter.com and enter your preferred hashtag in the search box. Did you get any results? Is someone else already using that hashtag for their event or campaign?

If there is a lot of conversation around it already, you might want to revisit your decision and pick something that isn’t as frequently used. In that way, you will reduce the chances of people who are not a part of your target audience entering/diluting the conversation you want to take place.

2) Pick Industry or Brand Keywords

Hashtags can also help communicate a message to those not actively searching for them. For example, if someone you're following is tweeting about an event using a hashtag, you will still be able to see their updates in your main Twitter feed without accessing the entire hashtag conversation. In other words, you'll be able to catch a glimpse of what they're tweeting about and quickly connect the content of the tweet to the hashtag they're using. And if the hashtag reflects an industry or branded keyword that is interesting to you, you might be inclined to check out the rest of the conversation happening around that hashtag, a win for the marketer who created it!

3) Be Careful With Sentiments

A lot of politicians and big brands have experienced Twitter failure by choosing hashtags that include the word “love” in them. Love is a strong word, so if you are putting it in the mouth of your followers, make sure they really love you. Otherwise, they might turn against you and cause a major PR controversy. For instance, the Mitt Romney Twitter campaign that sought to wish him a happy birthday also attracted quite a lot of critical comments. If you are just starting out, pick something neutral that simply reflects your topic or campaign.

Furthermore, beware hashtag campaigns that have the potential of getting abused by users. The McDonald's #McDStories hashtag campaign, which was launched as a way to share fun stories about people's experience at McDonald's, is a great example of a hashtag choice gone wrong. What McDonald's didn't foresee was people sharing negative stories about the McDonald's brand, and that's exactly what happened. Anyone who searched for "McDStories" were immediately met with thousands of tweets similar to the one below, which described awful experiences users had with McDonald's.

I'd pet a million stray pit bulls before I'd eat a single pink-slimy McBite. #McDStories bit.ly/wd0BDe
— Laura Goldman (@lauragoldman) February 4, 2012

The takeaway here is to consider the other ways people could possibly interpret your hashtag. A fast food chain, especially one that has experienced controversy and negativity toward its brand in the past, should understand that it probably has quite a few naysayers willing to speak out against their brand.

4) Promote the Hashtag by Incorporating it Into Other Marketing Channels

A hashtag is only useful if people know about it. So to start generating conversations through your hashtag, start adding it your existing resources and channels. For instance, every time we have a webinar, we add the event hashtag to our email reminder or follow-up communication, and the presenter reminds attendees of the hashtag at the beginning of the live webinar as well. Similarly, we add the hashtag to the social media sharing links we include on landing pages.

5) Don’t Hijack Hashtags for Sensitive Situations

As we've covered in a previous blog post, hijacking hashtags designed for serious and sensitive issues can lead to some pretty bad consequences. Designer Kenneth Cole, for example, tried to insert his brand into conversations about the Egypt uproar by tweeting the following:

Through this tweet, Kenneth Cole tried to hijack the #Cairo hashtag in attempt to promote his spring collection. His message was received with strong public disapproval and media criticism. As David Meerman Scott says, “Don’t attempt to piggyback on news when it conveys extremely negative information, such as people’s deaths.”

Below is Twitter's official stance when it comes to hashtag abuse. As you can see, there's more at stake than just PR backlash ...

"The following behaviors and others like them could cause your account to be filtered from search, or even suspended:

• Adding one or more topic/hashtag to an unrelated tweet in an attempt to gain attention in search.
• Repeatedly tweeting the same topic/hashtag without adding value to the conversation in an attempt to get the topic trending/trending higher.
• Tweeting about each trending topic in turn in order to drive traffic to your profile, especially when mixed with advertising.
• Listing the trending topics in combination with a request to be followed.
• Tweeting about a trending topic and posting a misleading link to something unrelated.

6) Keep it Short

Be sure to keep your hashtag short and easy to remember. Remember that Twitter users are only allotted 140 characters in each tweet, with or without a hashtag. By keeping the hashtag brief, you'll save your audience some room to include more commentary about your content.

What are some of the lessons you've learned from using Twitter hashtags? Share them with us in the comments!






























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Google Launches Improved Online Advertising Metrics for Brand Marketers

For traditional brand marketers, it's no secret that measuring the impact of advertising efforts has always been a struggle. But with the rise of the web and digital advertising, luckily, these efforts have gotten much easier to measure through such standardized metrics as clicks, interaction rates, and conversions.

But have these metrics ever really been good enough to measure branding?

Google thinks not. Which is why today at the Ad Age Digital Conference, Google, partnering with the industry and supporting the IAB's Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) coalition, has launched the new Brand Activate Initiative, "an ongoing Google effort to address these challenges and re-imagine online measurement for brand marketers." The new initiative aims to reduce marketers' challenges in measuring an ad's ability to cause changes in brand favorability or in driving purchase intent and, ultimately, sales.

The announcement of Google's new initiative is also accompanied by its first wave of new brand metrics, which are being built into the tools advertisers already use to manage their ad campaigns. These three measurement initiatives are the Active View and Active GRP metrics (both rolling out starting today), and the Brand Impact Survey Pilot (coming soon).

Before we dive into what these individual metrics mean, check out Google's overview video on its new Brand Activate Initiative:

Active View

The first of the new Brand Activate Initiative metrics is Active View, a technology that can count “viewed” impressions, or a display ad that is at least 50% viewable on the screen for at least one second, as defined by the IAB’s proposed standard. In other words, with Active View, brand marketers can understand more than just impressions (i.e. simply whether their ads have been served). Now they can also understand whether the ad was actually viewed. Active View is made up of two insights: the percentage of the ad that was seen, as well as the duration for which it was seen.

Active View is being submitted for accreditation by the Media Rating Council (MRC), will be available in the coming weeks within the Google Display Network Reserve, and will be made a universal currency that will ultimately be offered within DoubleClick for Advertisers and Google's publisher partners, meaning advertisers will have the opportunity to pay only for Active View, or viewed impressions.

Active GRP (Gross Rating Point)

Active GRP is an online metric that adopts the methodology of GRP (gross rating point), a television advertising metric used to estimate how many people saw a certain TV advertisement. Google hopes that by using an online equivalent of this standard offline metric, marketers will be able to extend brand marketing from offline to online, comparing results across the two mediums.

Active GRP, like the traditional offline metric, enables marketers to determine the reach and frequency of a given online advertising campaign. But because Active GRP is built into the ad serving tools Google's publishers and marketers already use, it also allows marketers to react and make adjustments to their campaigns in real time, a feature missing from its offline counterpart. According to Google, Active GRP also depends on a robust methodology that combines aggregated panel data and anonymous user data with Active View data to combat issues like panel skewing and reliance on a single data source.

Active GRP is first being used in a pilot program for Google's DoubleClick for Advertisers clients before being rolled out to other products.

Brand Impact Survey Pilot

The final brand measurement initiative Google mentioned is its Impact Survey Pilot with digital brand advertising measurement company, Vizu. While Google reported very little on what this entails, we do know that it is the result of an experiment Google reported on last month involving online brand measurement research for approximately 70 DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) campaigns. The approach leverages DoubleClick ad-serving technology to generate two groups of users that have been randomly selected. One group sees the campaign ads, while the other sees public service ads instead, and Vizu’s sampling technology is then used to administer a brand lift survey to all users to measure such variables as brand awareness, purchase intent, and favorability. According to Google:

"The brand results show how ads performed across the campaign, as well as different sites and ad frequencies. This data can be used with the other campaign metrics in DFA to help marketers to see the impact of the campaign using any metric they want -- from impressions to clicks to brand impact to conversions."

A Big Win for Brand Marketers

These three new online advertising metrics are definitely a big win for brand marketers everywhere. And Google reportedly isn't stopping there, mentioning plans to continue iterating, integrating, and providing even more metrics for brand marketers to understand how their digital advertising efforts are paying off.

As Google says, "We think that with brand new metrics comes a new brand moment -- one that will encourage brands to invest in the web, help publishers show the value of their digital content, and stimulate digital media’s own golden age."

For many, online advertising has proven to be a great complement to an overarching inbound marketing strategy, but measuring advertising's impact on branding has always been a struggle. But with new initiatives sprouting up like Google's, brand marketers will more effectively be able to measure how well their digital advertising campaigns are contributing to their overall marketing programs, and that's certainly to marketers' delight.

What do you think of Google's new initiative? Will you be more apt to experiment with online advertising as more robust metrics become available?









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