Qube Media.

Brands need to come clean online

Brands, advertisers and marketers can no longer go into blogs or online forums and big up their products or services without being open and honest about who they are.

We've had a few clients ask us how the recent legislation (part of the European Unfair Commerical Practices Directive) has affected the Online PR and Social Media Marketing activity we undertake for them.

The simple answer is that it hasn't. Not being honest about who you are when engaging with any online community has always been a bad idea, with or without a law.

Good Online PR and Social Media Marketing is about building genuine relationships with people who have an interest in what you're talking about. If you're not being honest with them, they'll realise quickly enough and the damage to your brand could be devastating.

Nobody's looking at your banner ads

'Internet users tend to avoid fixing their eyes on anything that looks like advertising', New Scientist reported last week – and the phenomenon has been dubbed "banner blindness" by Nidhi Mathur of Hewlett Packard's research lab in Bangalore, India.

Obviously, this poses a massive problem to advertisers – especially if the stats New Scientist quotes are correct: only 3 people click through for every 1,000 ad impressions.

How are online advertisers combating 'banner blindness' – by putting ads onto the pared down 'print this page' versions of their clients' websites. Sounds like a good idea at first – and initial studies show web users do remember ads they've seen on their printouts more than those online.

But many, like psychologist Joanna Bawa, believe this effect will be ephemeral: 'people are increasingly resistant to ads generally, and will soon figure out what's going on.'

Here at Qube, we're seeing a growing trend: clients are starting to realise that a smarter way to spend their online advertising budget is to take an approach that doesn't interrupt the attention of their potential clients.

By assigning quite a small percentage of their overall advertising budget to search engine optimisation, social media marketing and online PR, they are generating more engagement and click-throughs from people who are already showing an interest in their goods and services. And that means more sales.

Best of all, all this activity is fully trackable – just a thought for those of you deciding where you can most effectively allocate your budget.

Check out the article on the New Scientist website >

Apollo's Pad starting to buzz

Our social media activity for Apollo's Pad is starting to create a buzz in the trade press... check out this news story on Brand Republic.

Fobbed off a telemarketer recently?

Telemarking can be effective - but only if it's done in the right way by people who know what they're doing. We've all been on the receiving end of a call from an aggressive or rude telemarketer. Last week, we politely said no and were sworn at. Another time, the guy simply hung up on us when he realised we weren't buying.

Now there's some evidence that telemarketing is a less effective way of impressing potential customers than other forms of marketing.

A survey carried out by mailstream technology specialist Pitney Bowes has found telemarketing to be the most irritating marketing channel. Spam emails and text ads chimed in a close second and third.

Conversely, direct mailouts scored lowest, making them the most effective form of direct marketing activity.

Read more at Precision Marketing

We're recruiting: web marketing executives

We're hiring again - we're looking for senior, middleweight and trainee web marketing executives.

Check out our web marketing jobs page.

Apollo's Pad party has started!

The first 5 episodes of the new puppet comedy show Apollo's Pad are now live.

Watch the episodes

Comedy puppets for grown ups

The world's number one puppet-run nightclub is about to open its doors. Think the muppets on drugs and you get the idea.

Qube is responsible for the web-based show's online marketing - you can catch the first 5 webisodes of Apollo's Pad at www.apollospad.com on Wednesday 5 March 2008.

There's a number of trailers already on the site and you can catch other promotions on the Apollo's Pad channel on YouTube.

We're hiring again: web marketing consultants, producers and assistants

We're looking for talented and experienced web marketing consultants and web producers. We're also hunting for intelligent, capable marketing assistants - we'll be posting the full job specs for all three positions on the Qube website shortly.

If you think you've got skills that would make you a good addition to our Brighton-based web marketing team, get in contact. But you must have relevant web marketing experience and a knowledge of search and social media marketing.

Email us to tell us more about you and your experience: jobs@qubes.co.uk

No agencies please. Really. Not maybe, not we'll think about it. Just no agencies.

Customers think it's good to talk

If you were in any doubt as to whether it's wise or not to talk to your customers online, take a look at these statistics care of Shiny Red:

-51% of customers believe brands should engage with them online.
-One third of respondents said in future they would spend more time on social networking sites.
-35% said they were more likely to visit a brand website if they had read about it somewhere else online.
-62% agreed information acquired online is often valued more highly than information acquired elsewhere.
-55% of respondents said 'dishonesty' and 'heavy-handedness' were the biggest turn-offs in terms of brand behaviour.

Pay close attention to that last statistic – exposing your soft underbelly to the public might make you feel vulnerable but, as always, honesty is the best policy.

The IKEA content trap

If you're not a fan of IKEA, the two mile walk past cut-price cafetieres, flat pack bunk beds and plastic lampshades to find the one thing you came for is enough to drive you nuts.

Their hope is that without a clear route to your destination, you'll pick up a trolley-load of things you never planned on buying but for many of us, ten minutes in and we've had enough.

Michael Steltzner, author of whitepapers for companies such as Microsoft, HP and FedEx, makes a nice analogy between this type of shopping experience and web content.

If you don't get straight to the point, or at least show readers where to look, they'll decide they've had enough too – except they won't have to negotiate dining furniture to get away.

Read the full article