A basic concept of localization is to use the language of your audience.
I guess some brands (especially those from the US) forget this point when marketing to others who speak the same language.
I just received an e-mail newsletter from Disney, featuring a dining offer at their Florida resorts. It's clearly an office targeted at Canadians (like me), and makes a few obvious references to this point such as being clear that the price is in US dollars and that the Disney Canada privacy policy applies to the newsletter's database.
This is good. You wouldn't expect a major marketer like Disney to screw up those types of things.
What I really like, though, is the less-obvious fact that the copy was written with Canadians in mind: the subject line was "A Walt Disney World offer you'll savour."
Sure, it's a tiny detail. But using the Canadian spelling of "savour" is a nice touch.
Not every brand bothers to make these little adjustments or to write something new for different audiences. For example, we recently received a brochure for a local pizza place in the mail. It's a franchisee in a large chain (Dominoes, I think) that I'm sure just orders brochures from the head office that are simply shells customized with the franchisee's address, phone number, map, etc. It's a food provider, so of course they use words like "flavor" throughout the brochure. Unfortunately, here the word "flavour" would be more appropriate.
Would it really be that difficult for the company to provide "Canadian versions" of their marketing materials? Do the franchisees have any input into the contents and copywriting of those marketing materials? I would assume that the company has a Canadian head office - why didn't they "translate" these materials?
I wonder if it's an oversight, laziness, or a lack of caring.
How big does a difference between target audiences need to be before it's worthwhile to address those differences?
Showing posts with label targeting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label targeting. Show all posts
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Welcome To 1987
Wow. I got a fax spam today.
It's hard to believe that any company still does this.
Then again, there are plenty of people who simply don't care how much they annoy potential customers.
Welcome to my "never buy anything from these people ever" list. Say hi to the guys who cut me off in traffic while driving a company vehicle, and the bank that insists on calling me weekly at dinnertime to try to sell me insurance.
It's hard to believe that any company still does this.
Then again, there are plenty of people who simply don't care how much they annoy potential customers.
Welcome to my "never buy anything from these people ever" list. Say hi to the guys who cut me off in traffic while driving a company vehicle, and the bank that insists on calling me weekly at dinnertime to try to sell me insurance.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Basic Features
A little off-topic from previous posts, but...
I'm currently doing some online media buying for a couple of ad campaigns. Online advertising has been around for, what, over a decade now right? And one of the great benefits of this medium is the ability to precision target.
Why, then, are there still major Web sites that don't offer basic capabilities like geographic targeting of ads? Just as incredibly, some sites that do provide geo-targeting actually charge extra for the privilege.
Any sites that already use an ad server can have geo-targeting capabilities for virtually no additional cost. Maybe a bit of extra time for the technical and traffic people to set up, and maybe a slightly higher ad serving cost, but these shouldn't be sufficient impediments.
Even worse, it's not just a case of "here's something extra we could do for a few of our customers."
By offering geo-targeting, a publisher is actually increasing the value of all their ad impressions -- even those used by advertisers who don't specifically look for this feature.
On a basic level, there's the benefit to those who want this feature: If I'm going after a very specific audience, I'm wasting every impression that's seen by someone other than my target. So, the more targeting capabilities available to me, the better-performing my campaign will be. As a result, the happier with the publisher and will be more likely use them again. I don't mind paying a higher (but reasonable) price because I'm satisfied with the response rate.
Beyond this, there's the benefit to many of the other advertisers: Impressions that a local or regional advertiser takes from the "pool" of avails are ones that national advertisers may not even want anyway. For example, let's say a US-based site has 1,000,000 impressions each month, and that 50,000 of these are from users in Australia. If an Australia-based company buys those 50,000 impressions specifically, the remaining advertisers who are targeting American users know that they aren't wasting their money reaching people who can't or won't buy their products.
Regardless of the details, though, the simple point is that a feature that adds value to someone could be offered with very very little effort to the provider, and yet isn't.
I suspect it's just laziness. One of those things that "we'll get around to eventually." If the bulk of customers are equally lazy (or ignorant of the possibilities) and buying most of what the supplier has available, it's understandable that the supplier feels no pressing need to make even a minimal effort for the time-being.
But:
a.) Money is money and new business is new business. Why turn away a potentially good customer who would like to buy from you?
b.) The marketplace (any marketplace) is competitive. If you don't offer a feature, somebody else does (or soon will). Lose a customer to them now, and you very likely won't easily get that customer later.
c.) Customers won't stay lazy or ignorant forever (in part, because of the competitors from #2).
Edited to add:
Okay, so I got a bit of an explanation about this from one site. They say that it's not worth doing geo-targeting (at least for the markets I'm buying) because they don't have enough impressions in a particular geographic location. Their excuse is that they have a minimum spend amount in order to ensure that a particular campaign gets enough impressions to be effective. In order to reach this minimum spend, I'd have to buy about 2/3 of a market's impressions each month. Okay, fair enough. But... if this is really the case, why not drop the minimum spend for campaigns that use geo-targeting to this degree? If I'm buying 2/3, or even 1/3, or even 1/8 of ALL the targeted impressions on a site, I'm probably getting some pretty strong reach and frequency numbers for my target audience. There wouldn't be much clutter to compete with. I'd much rather monopolize a small target than waste a bunch of impressions on a completely irrelevant broader audience.
I'll keep waiting for a good explanation.
I'm currently doing some online media buying for a couple of ad campaigns. Online advertising has been around for, what, over a decade now right? And one of the great benefits of this medium is the ability to precision target.
Why, then, are there still major Web sites that don't offer basic capabilities like geographic targeting of ads? Just as incredibly, some sites that do provide geo-targeting actually charge extra for the privilege.
Any sites that already use an ad server can have geo-targeting capabilities for virtually no additional cost. Maybe a bit of extra time for the technical and traffic people to set up, and maybe a slightly higher ad serving cost, but these shouldn't be sufficient impediments.
Even worse, it's not just a case of "here's something extra we could do for a few of our customers."
By offering geo-targeting, a publisher is actually increasing the value of all their ad impressions -- even those used by advertisers who don't specifically look for this feature.
On a basic level, there's the benefit to those who want this feature: If I'm going after a very specific audience, I'm wasting every impression that's seen by someone other than my target. So, the more targeting capabilities available to me, the better-performing my campaign will be. As a result, the happier with the publisher and will be more likely use them again. I don't mind paying a higher (but reasonable) price because I'm satisfied with the response rate.
Beyond this, there's the benefit to many of the other advertisers: Impressions that a local or regional advertiser takes from the "pool" of avails are ones that national advertisers may not even want anyway. For example, let's say a US-based site has 1,000,000 impressions each month, and that 50,000 of these are from users in Australia. If an Australia-based company buys those 50,000 impressions specifically, the remaining advertisers who are targeting American users know that they aren't wasting their money reaching people who can't or won't buy their products.
Regardless of the details, though, the simple point is that a feature that adds value to someone could be offered with very very little effort to the provider, and yet isn't.
I suspect it's just laziness. One of those things that "we'll get around to eventually." If the bulk of customers are equally lazy (or ignorant of the possibilities) and buying most of what the supplier has available, it's understandable that the supplier feels no pressing need to make even a minimal effort for the time-being.
But:
a.) Money is money and new business is new business. Why turn away a potentially good customer who would like to buy from you?
b.) The marketplace (any marketplace) is competitive. If you don't offer a feature, somebody else does (or soon will). Lose a customer to them now, and you very likely won't easily get that customer later.
c.) Customers won't stay lazy or ignorant forever (in part, because of the competitors from #2).
Edited to add:
Okay, so I got a bit of an explanation about this from one site. They say that it's not worth doing geo-targeting (at least for the markets I'm buying) because they don't have enough impressions in a particular geographic location. Their excuse is that they have a minimum spend amount in order to ensure that a particular campaign gets enough impressions to be effective. In order to reach this minimum spend, I'd have to buy about 2/3 of a market's impressions each month. Okay, fair enough. But... if this is really the case, why not drop the minimum spend for campaigns that use geo-targeting to this degree? If I'm buying 2/3, or even 1/3, or even 1/8 of ALL the targeted impressions on a site, I'm probably getting some pretty strong reach and frequency numbers for my target audience. There wouldn't be much clutter to compete with. I'd much rather monopolize a small target than waste a bunch of impressions on a completely irrelevant broader audience.
I'll keep waiting for a good explanation.
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