Marketing Thoughts by Domus Inc.

Although 2009 has not been a stellar year for video games, the industry is poised to start growing again. Big name titles are due to be released through the rest of this year, and exciting new technologies are soon to be released. One such technology is Microsoft’s Project Natal for the XBox 360, a sensor that combines a camera, depth sensor, microphone, and a custom processor. It tracks full body movement, understands commands, and recognizes voices.

Natal won’t come out until 2010, but if it does come out with a good array of games, it has the potential to greatly expand the size and demographics of the XBox user base. And with Microsoft’s 20+ million XBox Live user base, there are golden opportunities for marketers looking to reach this audience with video, animation, branded experiences, and more. Today the user profile is primarily male, 15-34, but with Natal, this could well expand into the Wii’s territory.

Domus is a full-service marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia, PA. Please visit our web site for more information.

Everyone today is jumping on the social media bandwagon, mostly because everyone is jumping on the social media bandwagon. But when it comes time to determine the success or failure of a program, most marketers cannot do so. In some cases, there are no easily identified metrics, and in other cases, the easily identified ones might be misleading.

One typical metric is the number of fans/followers/members/etc. This is simple to define and easy to track, but is it valuable? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. It depends on the make-up of the fan base and the goal of the social media program. Is the goal to engage consumers in product enhancement exercises? Is the goal to offer online CRM services? Is it to keep customers abreast of news and/or promotions? Or is it something else?

The answers to those questions should probably guide the nature of the social media efforts, which in turn will help define the success metrics. For example, a coffee chain might do well engaging with millions of online fans. But does a toilet paper company need a fan page? Might other online/social media avenues be more productive?

Social media is a growing component of marketing communications plans. But as with any other tool, it’s important to use it in the most effective manner, whether or not everyone else is or is not doing the same.

Domus is a full-service marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. Please visit our web site for more.

Last year Sarah Bird posted an article on seomoz.org providing detailed steps on copyrighting the content of your web site. It’s a great “how-to” guide, listing simple steps that anyone can follow and costing under $50 total ($45 for the Library of Congress’ Copyright Office and a few extra dollars for a blank CD, some paper, some use of your computer and printer, an envelope, and a stamp). You can copyright your entire site, specific pages, or components of pages (e.g., videos, images, etc.), and you can easily submit updates for dynamic and changing content.

So, if the process is simple and inexpensive, why not do it now? The Digital Millenium Copyright Act gives you legal recourse in case anyone steals your content. Moreover, without a copyright, you can’t even force someone from ceasing to use your work. And it can be more than just a few lines or pictures appearing elsewhere. The more of your content that appears elsewhere, the more your SEO rank might be co-opted by these other sites, the more confused about you and your brand your potential market becomes, and the more traffic that might never even come to your site. In fact, it’s possible (and has happened) for unscrupulous people to steal content from your site for deceptive or malicious purposes. Without a copyright, there is little you can do about it.

As an addendum, once you have a copyright, rather than passively waiting to find out if any of your content has been stolen, it’s a small investment to do periodic searches to look for plagiarism and unauthorized duplication. Sites such as http://www.copyscape.com are useful tools in this endeavor.

Domus, Inc. is a full service advertising, PR, internet marketing, and social media agency headquartered in Philadelphia, PA. Please visit our web site for more.

The Commerce Department reported that sales of durable goods (including large home appliances) rose 4.9% in July, which followed a 1.1 increase in June. (June was originally reported to show a 2.2% decrease.) Moreover, new home sales also rose in July, the fourth straight month of increases. It’s obviously not all good news – we all can see the recession around us – but these are small rays of light, and possibly the opportunity for large home appliance manufacturers to rebound by stepping up their marketing efforts.

Add to this the government’s home appliance rebate program (see Home Appliance “Cash for Clunkers”) and consumers might have just enough incentive to start buying. If so, the brand that has positioned itself most effectively will reap the most rewards.

With the increasing adoption of DVRs, video-on-demand, and video web sites, television broadcasters and advertisers are growing correspondingly worried. More and more people are skipping more and more ads. However, it is premature to sound the death knoll.

Although people are not sitting through ads the way they used to, there are still many television ads that are effectively communicating their messages. What shows do you watch on TV? What ads do you remember? Ask your friends the same questions. I doubt you’ll find anyone who doesn’t quickly remember a few commercials.

Marketers can no longer assume that they have a captive audience, but we do have an audience – a significant one – and we can reach it with effective ads as part of an overall communications strategy. Moreover, now is an opportune time to revisit television because of better segmentation and lower prices.

Domus is a full service marketing communications firm based in Philadelphia. We develop effective communications programs by combining classic marketing principles with modern execution. Please visit our web site at http://www.domusinc.com for more.

It’s interesting that with all of the attention on the decline of traditional media, two of the biggest online companies turn to offline media to promote their brand. Google is using billboards to lure more people to use Google for search, and Microsoft is using television to lure more people to use Bing.

As long as people spend significant portions of their time watching TV, listening to radio, reading magazines, or driving, the corresponding media remain valuable components of marketing strategies. The big online companies know this.

Domus is a Philadelphia-based marketing communications firm. Please visit our web site, http://www.domusinc.com for more information.

As the automobile “Cash for Clunkers” program winds down this coming week, marketers can start eying the next big government “stimulus” program. Congress has set aside $300 million for states to run their own rebate program to encourage consumers to buy new energy-efficient home appliances, with money flowing to consumers as early as November.

Where does this leave marketers? If the consumer reaction to the automobile program was any indication, there might well be a surge in household appliance purchases in the fourth quarter of this year. Marketers should do themselves a favor and prepare their promotional campaigns now. The first ones out of the gates will most likely have a sales edge on the competition. Promotional offers, media buys, PPC campaigns, etc. should all be in development now so that companies can hit the ground when the time is right.

Domus is a Philadelphia-based full service marketing communications agency with expertise and extensive experience in the home furnishings and home appliance industries. Although the industry has been signiicantly hurt during this economic downturn, we expect a strong blip in activity, and we believe that those companies who effectively prepare will come out of this recession in a stronger market position than before. Please visit our web site for more.

Google just released some research by its chief economist, where they conclude that conversion rates don’t vary much by ad position. The reason people tend to correlate higher conversion rates with ad position is that Google uses an internal algorithm to rank the quality of ads and automatically pushes higher in the rankings those that are higher quality. Therefore, the correlation is between conversion rates and ad quality, while ad position is just tagging along with quality. Google showed this by studying the conversion rates of the exact same ads across different positions. They found that there was less than a 5% difference in conversion rates across all positions, including top and right.

So what is the lesson to be taken away from this by PPC marketers? Worry a little less about bidding higher CPCs to get better positioning. Rather, focus more on ad content as it relates to associated keywords. Of course, this is not to say that in every situation Google’s research will hold true, but it’s certainly worth taking into consideration when deciding whether to increase bids as the tactic to get higher traffic.

Domus provides a full array of internet marketing services, including internet presence management, social media marketing, SEO, and SEM services, among others. We’re a full service marketing communications agency. Please visit our web site to find out more about us.

The video game industry is in as much a recession as the rest of the country (Video Game Sales in Free Fall). But it is still roughly a two billion dollar a month industry and is poised for major growth over the next few months. Even separate from Sony’s recent price cut of its PS3, most of the major new game titles of 2009 are scheduled to be released over the next 4-5 months (The Beatles: Rock Band, Halo 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, etc.).

With that said, the video game industry is still a major untapped source of opportunity for marketers. In-game advertising is still a relatively small business (around $400 million now), as are other marketing tie-ins (similar to the way companies have advertising tie-ins to upcoming movie releases). Moreover, the demographics of the overall video game market is a lot broader than teenage boys. In fact, studies show a large audience of both men and women in their thirties (Video Gamers Older Than You Think).

As marketers are looking for ever new avenues to communicate their messages, this is one medium worthy of new or renewed attention.

Domus is a full-service advertising, PR, and internet marketing firm based in Philadelphia. Please visit our web site for more.

Products, such as lottery tickets, are often spur-of-the-moment purchases. These types of products benefit greatly by having broadly distributed buying opportunitites. States who have flat or too-slowly rising lottery sales can experience better returns on their marketing investment by funneling more funds into retailer recruitment programs vs. other areas. Of course, this doesn’t mean that states should not create new lottery games or that states should not advertise their lotteries, but ignoring retailer recruitment can greately diminish their overall ROI.

Effective retailer recruitment programs should involve more than just telemarketing efforts to bring in new retailers. Marketing research focusing on geographically segmented demographics and buying habits should be an essential component of the program. So should investments in POS materials, training, and other support mechanisms. Even coordinating targeted advertising can be part of the overall program.

Domus is a full-service advertising and marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. We have been very successful in implementing lottery retailer recruitment programs, and see this as a continued growth avenue for state lotteries.