Dan Soschin

Groupon Sued for False Advertising

Groupon was recently sued on account of its display advertising practices. You can read the story here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=147156&nid=124985.

What it comes down to is that the display ads contain keywords and URLs for products/services that Groupon isn’t really offering or promoting. But, it is using those URLs and keywords to attract attention and gain relevance in AdRank and higher position (or more impressions).

I believe that if Groupon is using a URL, keyword or name of a specific product/place/thing in its advertising and does not directly link to that product or does not offer that product on the day the advertisement is served, then it is indeed improper.

The claim also suggests that by allowing Groupon to bid on those terms, it is driving up the cost of advertising for other vendors. I also agree with this as well.

This may be in fact a result of Groupon’s rapid growth and the fact that perhaps to fuel this growth it has started to employ sub-par staff or agencies not well versed in legal advertising practices. Just because you can do it doesn’t mean it is ethical, legal or proper. And I have seen time and again search marketers, companies and agencies employ unethical and illegal search practices. I am sure Groupon is not immune to these risks and should review its policies with staff on this issue and many others to limit its future liability.
Radian6 Social 2011 Quick Recap
I spoke last week on the topic of “Social Media in a Regulated Space” at the first annual Radian6 user conference (Social2011).

Here are some of the topics our panel addressed:
- What challenges have you experienced with your organization’s leadership recognizing the value of social media? And how did you overcome the push-back? How did/do you encourage the organization to be social?
- Do you have a social media policy? If so, what topics are covered in your social media policy?
- Do you allow your non-marketing employees to participate in social community threads related to your school?
- Do you allow access to social community sites for non-marketing employees during the work day?
- Do your employees (including those not in marketing) go through social community training?
- How do you handle complaints when you have so many employees and departments? How to you address attacks on your brand?
- How do you address complaints in public forums that might require personal info or other regulated information?
- Do you have a predetermined set of criteria (resolution tree) for who to respond to and how?
- What types of content are you using to encourage engagement?
- How frequently do you monitor your communities?
- How many people do you have focusing on social media and why?
- How do you coordinate responsibilities when you have more than one person working within social communities?
- What metrics are you using to measure success?
- How do you report to executives on your social communities activities?
- Has your organization allocated a budget for social media yet? If not, how much of a challenge has this been and what creative tools do you use as a work-around?
I plan on addressing many of these questions on this blog in the coming weeks. Until then, I must say I was impressed with the conference, considering it was the first time they hosted it… The venue was great (Boston), the hotel was great (Marriott Renaissance)… logistically everything went very smooth. The keynotes were fantastic as well. The sessions were just average, and I think will benefit from a larger user base in the future. But props all around to the Radian6 team for a successful conference that was attended by far more than I expected.
GoDaddy CEO Puts Customers at Risk

Straight from the headlines:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/31/bob-parsons-godaddy-ceo-elephant-hunt_n_843121.html

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=148157&nid=125482#comments

It seems that some of my client’s sites that are hosted on GoDaddy.com are running much slower (if loading at all) right now. Coincidence? Maybe… or maybe someone hacked in retaliation. Us customers cannot have the liability of a CEO acting this way. Too risky for our small businesses.

We need business owners who are more socially responsible.
When Do Online Shoppers Convert?

Laurie Sullivan at SearchBlog (MediaPost) published an article discussing conversion findings by NetElixer. It contains some fascinating data that I recommend checking out if you are interested in understanding when people convert in the online shopping space.

However, I would caution you that the data varies greatly depending on the industry. I also believe that most people do a significant amount of browsing and shopping at work, based upon some baseline data collected from some of my own clients.

Regardless of your industry, you can do some simple day parting with Google Analytics. Look at when people are converting to minimize your planned outages, maximize customer support windows and to better understand your customers.
Social Media Policies for Engagement

Wanted to quickly share one of the best articles/discussions I’ve come across regarding social media policy for engagement. The list towards the end is a great checklist to evaluate your current efforts regarding this important issue. If you already have a policy, this is still a great article to read – to double check your strategy.

http://www.briansolis.com/2011/03/the-rules-of-social-media-engagement/
Following up with Sales Leads

Just how quickly should you follow up with your sales leads? I’ve always advocated two fundamental principles of a CRM-based lead generation program.

1. Follow-up within one hour or LESS (preferably less).

2. Follow-up via the same medium as the request. In other words, if the request was an e-mail or a web form, follow up via the web/e-mail (at a minimum).

How important is fast follow up? Put it this way, if you are not following up in the same day, you should not be doing lead gen, you have other problems to tackle first.

Here’s an article by the Harvard Business Review with some compelling data to support my main point.
Google’s Plus 1 Program May Alter Paid Search Landscape

Google recently announced the addition of a new feature called “Plus One”. It is quite similar to the Facebook “Like” button in that Google users can click the button which will show up in the “buzz” feed so that their followers see their endorsements. Users will be able to “+1” content, search results and even advertisements.

While Google says it has no public plans to allow +1 to affect AdRank or QualityScore, I would hypothesize that it will have an indirect affect.

As users are shown ads, Google may show the “plus” score of those ads, and perhaps even which friends of theirs have “plused” the ad. This may positively influence users into clicking ads that are endorsed by their friends, thus changing the performance of the ad. This is a boon for Google, who makes more money through more ad clicks.

Personally, I’d probably click on more ads, even out of curiosity to see why my friends had endorsed them.

You can read more here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=147730&nid=125248
Managing Negativity on Facebook
If you have a Facebook fan page and more than one employee at your company, guess what? It’s time for you to have a social media policy!

I won’t use this post to outline every detail of what should be included in your policy. But, at a high level, it should include these topics:
- Who is allowed to post
- Who can post as the company
- What people can post
- Who manages the forum
- What your fans are allowed to post
- What happens when you get an inflammatory post
- How do you handle critical posts
- How do you triage and handle posts that create issues
- Branding guidelines
- Examples of suggested post strategies
- Case studies of what has worked for your company historically
- and so much more…
I’ve written some guides for companies, that include handbooks, case studies and even webcast training sessions.

Yeah, this is serious stuff… but, Facebook is also fun and “light hearted”, so you need to remember to have fun first and foremost.

And finally, there are many resources on the net to help you get started with your policy. There are also many tips on how to handle negative posts or crises. I recommend you read a few, so to get started, here’s a good short one about B2B companies and how they’ve handled Facebook issues, by Jeffery Cohen.
Track Twitter Traffic with Google Analytics

I love Google Analytics. If you love it too, and have access to a technical resource, here’s a great article by Matt Clarke at eConsultancy.com on how to add your Twitter activity to Google Analytics for tracking/reporting/analysis.
When Something Goes Wrong Online (Because of You!)

I’ve often preached that one of the strongest (and most overlooked) benefits of digital marketing is that it enables you to be incredibly agile. You can test something quickly and alter it as you go. Pilots can be minutes or days, you can split test to your heart’s content, and so on.

Most importantly, you can correct mistakes! Say you screw up in social media, you can immediately be accountable and post a correction or apologize. If your ad has a typo, you can pull it down and correct it. This doesn’t mean you should be sloppy, lazy with your quality control, or cavalier in your instructions to your marketing teams. It just means you should use agility to your benefit.

Be quick to try something that might not be quite perfect so that you get the first mover advantage. Don’t spend weeks perfecting it – that just means lost market opportunity. Get it online and then worry about reiterations in the future.

And, if you screw up, here’s some fantastic advice to help you sleep at night from Amber Naslund at BrassTackThinking.com.