The Family Travel Blog for Families That Want to Travel Off The Beaten Path

There are so many family travel blogs out there. Apparently, there are quite a few mom's and dad's that can write, and also travel with their kids.

One blog, however, is really about traveling off the beaten path: My Travelling Circus. Yes, it's spelled correctly - it's the English way to spell "travelling". If you aren't interested in the usual destinations for young kids (nothing wrong with Disneyworld except the tens of thousands of other people visiting, of course) this blog is a must-read!

From the many Ancient, New, and Natural Wonders of the World: Macchu Picchu (with kids), the Great Wall of China, Angor Wat, Petra, Jordan, and more.  You'll also understand first hand how kids can celebrate the loudest New Year's in any country in Rejkavik, Iceland, exploring the mountains of Bhutan (with kids).  The author is so well-travelled, you'll be amazed that she has time to raise a family and write at the same time.

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Is Mobile Video Advertising More Effective Than TV Spots?

Mobile video advertising, and short-form video advertising in general, is and will continue to be more effective than most TV ad spots.  This is true for online video and mobile video.  And when I say most, it I mean everything except live events, especially sports.

Here's why: a captive audience.  

The video ad viewing results shared today by TapJoy go a long way to proving this.  While TapJoy ads aren't representative of most video ad networks, they are predicting where the market is going: 

For a telecom campaign, for instance, the Tapjoy videos produced a 48% higher recall, vs. 22% for TV, and the mobile campaign generated 25% brand likeability vs. 11% for the TV spots. Source: MediaPost

If a viewer wants to watch a video badly enough and they are forced to watch pre-roll, they will. And because they know the length, they know there's only one ad, and they know the won't be bothered again, they'll do it.  They've actually been doing it, and watching pre-roll video ads will continue to outpace TV for engagement, ad recall and brand recognition simply because they can't skip through it, and it's short enough where they won't try to multi-task to something else.  The format, the form, and the length make these ads truly make users watch them.
Now, not all videos are of equal consumer value, and the views on a single average video are nowhere near the volume of a single TV show.  But this is clearly quality over quantity right now.  But, equal quantity is just a matter of time as the walls breakdown between interent-based and cable-based video distribution.

Consumers implicitly understand this ad tradeoff now - "I watch a video ad (which I might even be interested in), I get the content I want to see".  

As long as publishers / advertisers don't start loading more than one 20-30 second clip, and the video ads are contextually or personally relevant to me, this tradeoff really works out.  Video ads are only going to get more engaging, and that's better for consumers and brands alike.

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Distribution & Conversion: The Fusion of Marketing and Product

Chief Marketing Officer: What’s in a Job Title?

The Product Management function for Internet companies is a Marketing function. If it’s not under Marketing in your company, it’s simply time to move it.

Marketing people can't do viral marketing.

Today’s "marketing" - viral marketing and word-of-mouth marketing - is built into the core of the product, and without the ability to design it in, marketing will continue to be expensive and sub-optimally effective, holding back the value of your business.

Today’s Chief Marketing Officer must not only straddle the fence between product specification and traditional marketing, but to be successful, remove the fence.

This isn't the Mad Men type marketer your mother warned you about - it's completely different sort:

"Marketing people can’t do viral marketing. You don’t just build a product and then choose viral marketing. There is no viral marketing add-on. Anyone who advocates viral marketing in this way is wrong and lazy. People romanticize it because, if you do it right, you don’t have to spend money on ads or salespeople. But viral marketing requires that the product’s core use case must be inherently viral." - Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 9 Notes

Marketing -- that job of creating awareness and finding new customers / users across a variety of media and channels -- is now less about paid media and more about earned media. The thing that’s changing the shape of the position is that the online product or service itself is now the biggest driver of earned marketing impact.  (Note: ecommerce remains very different - you're selling products online, not selling online products)

When people ask what I do, it’s almost impossible to communicate succinctly. As chief marketing officer, or senior vice president of marketing AND products, it’s complicated but critical to tell both stories and how they’re intertwined. And the value that I personally bring to the table is that I understand how and why they’re so intimately connected and know how to manage both sides synchronously.

If I explain that I’m in marketing, they get it the advertising part - but that’s only half my job (less these days). When I say I run product management, too, I get blank stares. I have to explain product management and that it’s not a coding position, but a general management position. (It’s somehow unique that software product managers, unlike the product managers at Proctor and Gamble, Mattel and Nestlé (who are the general managers of their products) don’t run into the same quandary.)

But, that’s changing - and it’s about time! Product Management needs more recognition as a critical function, even for startups. It’s usually the CEO or the CTO who’s the head product manager - it’s just not part of their title.

Take Instagram. Their focus on creating a passionate user network, rather than new features or platform expansion, turned that company into a tidy little acquisition. CEO Kevin Systrom understood the value of users, and [relentlessly] focused the technical team on that over all else. There were no Google Adwords campaigns, no SEO links, no paid Facebook campaigns, and hardly even a website – every bit of "marketing" was embedded the app.

As an accomplished Chief Marketing Officer for multiple Internet and software companies, building market awareness is largely reliant on a great product / service experience - and happy customers who can and want to tell their friends about it.

The customer drives marketing now. Marketing isn’t something you do. it’s what your customers and users do for you. If they like you (your product or service), it will grow (with well-executed coaxing and encouragement, and viral product design). If they think it’s OK or don’t like it, growth is slow, painful and expensive. It’s why so many companies fail – customers just aren’t delighted.

Not sure about your company? Give yourself a litmus test – run a customer survey to captive email addresses and your website to get your NPS (Net Promoter Score).  Ask just one question:

 How likely are you to recommend this product / service to a friend or colleague? 

The results will tell you how much work you have to do on your product experience with the goal of getting users completely enthused about it. (Make sure your scale is 0 to 10, not 1 to 10, otherwise you’ll be getting good information but it won’t be a comparable NPS score.)  An aggregate score of 70 or more is great - you're on your way.

Today’s successful Internet head of marketing isn’t a corporate marketing wonk, creative advertiser, or a brand builder – the traditional emphasis of a CMO. Marketing is not about paid media, brand advertising or even direct advertising. This new breed of CMO must orchestrate a blend of integrated online, social and email marketing programs that drive word of mouth and online recommendations and referrals. That means finding and leveraging happy customers as brand ambassadors and harnessing their inherent goodness. These programs are part of the product and service experience, intrinsically sharable and leverage the power of the network (and yes, the social graph). But how do you differentiate this CMO from the 'old version'?

Combining the “Chief Product Officer” and “Chief Marketing Officer” into a single role is the right call for early-stage Internet companies. My naming dilemma of the day is finding a new title for this role that encompasses both marketing and product management in a way that’s descriptive, intuitive and creative.

• Chief Experience Officer?
• Vice President of Distribution?
• Head of Customer Experience? 
• SVP of Advocacy? 
• VP of Customer Mobilization?
• VP of Customer Experience?
• Director of Social Sharing?
• Growth Hacker?

I could use your help – can you think of a job title that represents both product and marketing?

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Marketing Your Brand on Pinterest - Better Than Facebook?

There's a lot of talk about Pinterest lately due to it's crazy-fast growth (faster than Facebook): What is it good for? Why is it growing so quickly? Who's on it?  And, how should brands should use it?  Here’s a little insight into how consumer brands can use Pinterest effectively to drive traffic and sales as an integrated part of their social media marketing mix.

What does “being on” Pinterest really mean?

There are two ways for brands to be on Pinterest.  One is passive, one is active:

1. Get Pinned.  Optimize your website's content so others can easily Pin It, share it, discuss it.
2. Maintain a Pinboard.  Create and update a brand profile on Pinterest.

Get Pinned.  Optimize Your Website's Content

Even if you decide that creating a brand profile on Pinterest isn’t for you, you can and should still leverage Pinterest passively.  How?  Make it easy for Pinterest users to get your content to their Pinboard so they can share it.  All legal and copyright issues aside, when it comes to marketing, the more people talking about your products the better.

Step 1:  Identify the products on your website that people will covet.

The Power of Pinterest
(Click for Full Infographic)

That’s right, covet.  There has to be some sort of “drool factor” to get things Pinned on Pinterest.  If one person finds it desirable, many people will find it desirable and then Re-Pin it.  Re-Pins are the rocket fuel of Pinterest – the more you have, the more mindshare you've built, the more traffic you'll get.

You should treat each and every Pin as an object of desire – from the photo, to the description, to the link back to your site. Here’s where working with your web development team comes in – you need to make sure photos on your site can be Pinned.  Make sure photos are not rendered in Flash (if you’re still using Flash you’re missing out on many other social media promotions and SEO as well). Give each photo a caption (title) that is easy to select and copy (and then paste into Comments).  Make sure photo URLs are static (not on a CDN like Akamai).

Next: you can encourage visitors to create Pins.  There’s a Pinterest PinIt button (see button below the image to the right).  You should put that next to every photo or once on every page that has one or more product photos.  A good place for the PinIt button is right next to your Facebook Share and Tweet This icons in a nice red/blue/light blue grouping.

And, don't forget to include the 'Follow Me on Pinterest' button  next to your Follow on Facebook / Twitter buttons if you've set up a Pinboard.

All these buttons are getting making pages pretty crowded, so you might have to think about redesigning them into an appealing but unobtrusive graphical container.

Lastly: test it!  Make sure you can create Pins quickly and easily yourself.  If you can’t do it, then your customers and potential customers surely won’t.

Create a Pinboard.  Your Brand on Pinterest.

The discussions about whether or not to maintain a brand profile on Pinterest are ongoing.  Large consumer brands that are used to push marketing and brand marketing are having a hard time figuring out what to do.  Pinterest (and social media in general) is so…well, personal.

Does curating Pinterest content enhance a brand? Does it makes sense to do with all the other social media channels you’re maintaining?  If you represent a B2C product company - as long as you're not more than 80% male oriented - the answer is "Yes".

“For brands, Pinterest has the potential to connect inspiration to purchase,” said Matt Wurst, director of digital communities at 360i. “People know which websites to go to if they want to buy a specific product or type of product, but sometimes they need a spark of inspiration to help them make a decision…Retailers can use Pinterest to drive traffic to their e-commerce sites, whereas CPG marketers might use it to curate recipes around their products…”

Here’s a great flowchart infographic on whether or not you and your brand should bother with creating and account and maintaining content.  I can’t speak to the effectiveness of Pinterest for B2B use, but for B2C, Pinterest can be very very powerful.

The Pinterest Audience

Contrary to everything else you might have heard, marketing (and especially social media marketing) is about story telling.  Pinterest is story telling through pictures – and since 60% - 65% of people in the world prefer to take in information visually (read more about NLP) Pinterest is wildly appealing to a large part of the (female*) population.  If you’re targeting females, especially between the ages of 20 and 50, this is a great place to find and grow an new audience and keep connected to an existing one.

[* Why not males?  Like most things that require day to day attention - we can’t be bothered and we don't have anything close to a nesting instinct.  Not scientifically proven, but after talking about Pinterest with many different people, both male and female,  guys just don’t ‘get it’.]

Before you get all excited and move forward, realize that maintaining Pinterest is going to be like maintaining Twitter – you need to have multiple posts and interactions every day.  You need to share, like and comment on other people’s Pins.  It takes time, it takes creativity, and it takes dedication to maintaining the account.  An inactive account might as well be a dead account.  If you can’t put at least 30 minutes a day into it, reserve your name now but wait to use it until you have the time.

Your Pinterest Account

OK, so you’re managing a B2C brand that appeals to women between 20 and 50, and you’ve decided to create a Pinterest account – how should you set it up?  What I’ve seen work the best throughout social media is personal recommendations, rather than brand recommendations.  Even though social media brings people closer to brands, they’re still brands and not real people. Nominate an employee, use an executive, or create a persona to setup your account – each business will be different, but give your profile personality and a person’s headshot along with a logo, not just a big logo. People, especially women, want to feel an emotional connection.  You can’t do that as effectively with a corporate brand presence.

Your Pinterest Content

What should you post?  

Remember, this is story telling through pictures. Start with your company’s history and products – it’s usually the fastest and easiest.  Start pinning your own products from your website to create a visual product catalog.  Create the right topics or categories, and group the things you think people will (or do) covet.  Don't Pin every product, or every color variation.  Only Pin photos that make the item look as desirable as possible, and be selective.

IMPORTANT!  You should NOT Pin all of your products / content all at the same time!   The power of Pins is appearing at the top of your follower's feeds, and the subsequent benefit is social sharing, or Re-Pinning.  Pins show up in feeds for a moment in time – they will only be visible to your followers for an hour, a day, or a few days depending on how many people they are following.  If you Pin all your content at once, you’re throwing away most of it.  And if you don't have any followers, you're throwing away just about all of it!

Instead, create a following first.  As soon as you create your account and Pin a few products (5 - 10), start following people who seem to have the same tastes or interests as you and you’ll get reciprocal follows.  Create a base of followers this way.  Like and comment on other peoples’ Pins.  Also, link to your Pinboards from your other social media channels to get your existing followers / fans to follow you on Pinterest, too.   If you've done a good job there, you'll have a Pinterest following in no time.

Then, you’re ready to start a steady stream of Pinning – one of your products every hour or three.  Trickle the Pins in over time, and you’ll get much more traction, many more Re-Pins, and a lot more followers.

Your Story, Your Lifestyle

While you’re posting all the content that’s fit for Pinning from your website, it’s up to you to tell a story about your brand.  You're representing a lifestyle and trying to really identify with your core consumer.  Your "lifestyle" is really theirs - what else does your consumer do?  Based on your research, what else are they interested in?  Most importantly, what do they aspire to do?  What do they aspire to own?  What do they covet?

Your story is yours alone, and this is where having a personality represent the brand can make it easier (unless your brand is really interesting).  Every person has tastes and interests.  If you’ve chosen your company founder as the personality, for example, they have hobbies.  They have interests.  They have food they like to eat, cars they like to drive, shoes they like to wear.  

Create those categories and give your brand life beyond the products it sells.  Give your followers an emotional, non-sales connection to the lifestyle and tastes of your founder.  Create categories on your Pinboard for other people's content that essentially describe how those Pins reinforce your brand and messaging.

Become a Curator
Become a curator of a certain thing that is a direct benefit of your brand, educates about an area relevant to you, is focused on a charity or cause you support, or is in some way complementary to what you do.   Make it pretty broad to attract general interest.  People might not know about your company or product, but they might find you because of your lifestyle Pins.  This is hard!  Here are some examples:  

• You're an interior designer, create a Pinboard for new ways to use old things as furniture, decor, or art.
• You sell jewelry, educate your audience about gemstones, metals, and where they come from to reinforce the fact that your only use the best quality materials.
• You sell vacations, create boards about travel gadgets, luggage or recipes for cultural foods to reinforce that you're knowledgeable about travel in general.
• You're restauranteur, find all items that are trendy to reinforce your brand as trendy and hip - curate things your customers will covet.

This is storytelling at its finest.  Curating your visual story builds trust in your brand and your people in a subtle and genuine way.  After you build a base of followers organically this way, when you do decide promote that next new product, people are more likely to pay attention/.  They will like, Re-Pin, click through, and buy because they “know” you, trust you, and relate to what you represent.  In the end, you represent them.

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