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Bad publicity can be hard to overcome - especially if your business relies on reputation for 50% of its income.

In December 2007, Kangaroo Island had some pretty horrible publicity: widespread fires on the island (and media coverage to equal the fires). Now that the fires are out - so too are the tourists. The ABC reports that tourist bookings have dropped dramatically. With the economy of the island being 50% tourism this is a big issue - so is the reliance of the summer period to sustain through the winter down period. Hard times may be ahead for some.

The usual response to this kind of publicity is to communicate your story with the public. With more and more people researching online, your website is an important place to make sure this happens. Kangaroo Island promoters have indeed done this. The ‘official’ Kangaroo Island website have put a notice on their front page:

‘Coming to KI and concerned about the fires? Don’t be. Download K.I OK Map here (PDF 467KB)‘

Download the pdf and you’ll see a well prepared map with fire damaged areas highlighted and the reassurance that everything is ‘OK’. I think this is a good thing - checking the site for up to date news was the first thing I did when I heard about the fires. However I think there are a few things that could be done here to maximise the effect of the communication efforts:

1. Make sure it’s widely visible. One link on the front page is not enough - people will enter the website in other ways and may still have this issue in mind. Under the menu is an appropriate place to insert a site wide link/text/graphic.
2. Combine the power of the Internet. Ozone Hotel is a website of a business on the island yet there is nothing addressing the issue there. Ensure that as many other businesses are on board with you promoting your good news. A simple link on other websites promotes both the freshness and unity of all businesses involved. Both are important in helping people make a decision on travel.
3. Show the reality. I don’t see how showing people what they will get is a bad thing. If people go to the island not knowing there have been fires they may be disappointed. If they expect everything to be they may be disappointed.
4. Tell stories. Allow the personality and people of the island to tell a positive story. A personal response can communicate a greater deal of trust, and persuade those who doubt that the island is still a great place to go. This is done to a degree on the pdf download - where a ‘personal’ appeal is made, I believe a widening of this idea could help.

In the end - bad publicity is still going to affect the island and people may have their minds made up without even looking at Kangaroo Island related websites. However there are those who can still make up their minds. Don’t let them make their minds up without hearing your side of the story - ensure they can hear it. When/If this happens to your business - the important thing to do is to use the news. Be loud and clear and let people hear your side of the story.

Our ad was “clicked out” within 2 hrs of starting the campaign. So much for free ads on Facebook!

The Last few days

Over the last five or so days we have continued to monitor the ad (you can see it to the right). From the start we had our budget set at $5/day - that stayed the same throughout. However each day we gradually lowered the budget of our price per click from the begining $1 per click to now around $0.30 per click. Each time the ad was clicked out within a couple of hours of it starting again. We were disappointed to say the least - that our ad was so ‘popular’. We were really hoping to have a fair amount of time between the ads being displayed and the ad budget being filled. Anyway let’s get to the results.

• Each day we reduced our budget, our ad had a higher number of clicks;
• Our click through rate was between .05% and .02%;
• On average, the ad had 48931 impressions per day. The highest being 74976, the lowest being 22578.
• The average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) was between $0.22 and $0.08

For the purposes of testing how you might get thousands of impressions without many clicks - this might seem like an okay result. The lowest click through rate (CTR) was 0.02% - virtually no clicks compared to ads served. The only problem was that the ad was up for just 2-3hrs before the budget had ran out. We were hoping for a lot more time than that. Even on the days of $0.30 per click our ad budget was filled within a couple of hours. To mitigate this, I had moved the CPC budget to $0.25 for a few hours. This again had its own problems with hardly any ads being served (maybe 2000 in a few hours) but still clicks on the ad.

Visits to the site

Another hopeful result of advertising Rob’s desperation to get a girlfriend - was to get some ‘freebies’ on his site. No I’m not being coarse, what we wanted was people visiting Rob’s site without clicking on the ad itself. Basically free ad conversions without clicks. We certainly did get them I’ve put them below - you can see the higher number visits to Rob’s site compared with clicks on the ad.

The highest day of clicks also coincides with the highest day of visits. On average the site draws 3-4 visits a day (no traffic) so to see it go to 46 visits (28 ‘free’ visits) was an encouraging sign. Though this cannot be only related to the ad itself. Word had spread that the ad was up - so some people may have not seen the ad but still visited Rob’s site.

Conclusions

• Although being written from a first person perspective and following advice from other observers on its image - the ad still did not receive a high CTR. We were hoping for this anyway - so this can be seen as a good result. However from other people’s advice we were expecting a higher CTR. Most likely taking the option to pay per 1000 impressions is going to cost you a lot more than the potential result you will get from paying per click.
• The main problem we had with this ad was achieving a high impression rate with a low CTR over a long time. Either you don’t get seen and the ad is up for a lot longer, or you do get seen and your ad is gone very quickly. You might get relatively free ads served up - but only for a short period of time.
• We are yet to see if this actually works. That is, that Rob gets a girlfriend. He has had a few contacts because of the ad - let’s see what happens.

~Andrew (email me andrew at brownbox dot net dot au).

There have been various people talking about the value of advertising on Facebook.com recently. Most coming to the conclusion that putting an ad up on Facebook will not get you many clicks but thousands of impressions (times the ad was loaded on a page).

Well we decided to do our own experiment with a little bit of humour to see what the results would be. The purpose? To test variations of ads, and recommendations from other marketers online regarding Facebook’s advertising results.

We created the ad to the right for our first test. The ad is uses the Facebook colours and similar style branding to take the advice of one blogger who said it might increase click throughs or noticability. See below for the cost per click, and the budget set at $5 per day. This ad has a run of 7 days, you can see the first results below - at the end of the campaign in 7 days. The “target market” - Women aged between 18-30 from Australia.

Our initial results (after about 2hrs of having the ad up).

Here’s the initial response :

1. 22578 impressions (in about 2hrs)
2. 10 clicks
3. 2 new Facebook friends for Rob
4. 1 filled in the form on the website www.roblincolne.com

See More Results

Google is the best known and most used search engine - and when it comes to advertising on search engines most businesses think Google Adwords. But there’s a few more than just Google.

Here’s five sites you might not be aware of - that your business can advertise through to achieve exposure for your product/service.

1. Facebook
2. Microsoft Live Search - (get a $25 credit)
3. Yahoo Search
4. Text Link Ads
5. Blogads

With many more sites available to advertise through - you can get the customers you want and grow your business online. I can help you find the right place to advertise - contact me today to find out how.

Email newsletters are the best way to maintain customer relationships on the Internet. Don’t have a newsletter? Jakob Nielsen says “If you don’t have a newsletter, then publishing one is probably the single-highest ROI action you can take to improve your Internet presence.”

If you already have a newsletter then you will find that your readers will most likely:

• Be inclined to skip the introductory blah-blah text;
• Scan the email; and
• Spend on average 51 seconds reading your newsletter.

To write a better newsletter consider these techniques Neilsen suggests:

• Make your newsletter simple;
• Highlight key terms;
• Be predictable. Keep a consistent newsletter style and delivery time;
• Use meaningful headings and sub headings; and
• Be personal and real. Relationships are not built with marketing language.

Brown Box has the expertise and service to help you maintain your customer relationships. It’s called MailBox - and many of our clients have great relationships with their customers from using it. Contact me to find out how yours can too.

~Andrew