Case Studies

Moms Clean Air Force faced a daunting task. The organization wanted to harness the power of mothers throughout the United States to advocate for clean air to local, state and federal governments.

Why mothers?

The group knew that unclean air—whether in homes, schools, or outside—causes disproportionate health hazards to children.

Moms Clean Air Force logoHarnessing a crack editorial and social media team, the organization received funding from the Environmental Defense Fund and many celebrity endorsements.

Digital Director Shaun Dakin knew early on that the group would have to advertise in addition to reaching beyond traditional editorial channels. A skilled marketer in the public-private sector, Dakin also knew that stories were important to connect with audiences, but successful organization leaders rely on metrics, not just anecdotes.

“I asked Silver Beacon Marketing to help us solve advertising on search engines, on Twitter, Facebook and other social media,” said Dakin. “I worked with them in the past and knew that they don’t present fluff or fake numbers. Everything they do is strictly ROI driven.”

Silver Beacon’s passion for return on investment paid off handsomely for Moms Clean Air Force.

“We collaborated on powerful tracking reports immediately,” Dakin said. “Those reports helped the organization decide our priorities. Then Silver Beacon began advertising and found ways to match actions through multiple channels. Using analytics methods that most organizations can’t create for us, Silver Beacon showed us which channels worked for building community and the actual costs of adding a new community member and having that community member convert to our mailing list. The bottom line success metric is moving people from the web to our email list.”

Silver Beacon’s focus on return-on-investment (ROI) gave Moms Clean Air Force the confidence it needed to build a Facebook community that engaged with decision makers and also joined the group’s mailing lists for local and federal activity. The company continued weekly reporting to the leadership team on costs and ROI.

More responsibilities followed. A request to audit the organization’s website found more opportunity for improvement, and Silver Beacon Marketing built a new website for the organization while assuming responsibility for search engine optimization, website analytics and web development.

Successes of the Social Media Case Study, Advanced Search Optimization & Advertising

  • Cost-effective social media and search engine advertising opportunities
  • Search engine optimization of the organization’s website
  • Analytics reporting and analysis to organization leaders
  • Rebuilt and hosted the organization’s website

 

Case Studies

The owner of a content-driven website in a technical industry approached Silver Beacon Marketing with a unique situation.

Our traffic is great, but we know that we can get much, much more. We have people who read our site daily and others who use us to make huge buying decisions.  But there are many more people searching for data, and we don’t know how to reach them.  We have videos, active social media and a terrific reputation.  How do we move from the technical buyers to the tech-savvy buyers?

Analyzing How To Get New Visitors

We had previously worked on this website and knew their writers were among the best in the industry. The content they produced was so good that other websites throughout the world linked to them, the industry’s manufacturers monitored their work and a couple of million people visited each month through search engines.

Although clearly a champion of their industry, this website needed direction in finding a new audience who would appreciate their expertise.

Silver Beacon Marketing’s Solution:  Content Management & Marketing Constructs

Marketing construct example

To reach a tech-savvy audience who would appreciate the content on this site first meant understanding the audience.  That meant their ages, gender, education, likes and dislikes and enough factors to create a series of characters that represented them.  Marketers call these characters “constructs”. Silver Beacon often creates them when helping a client improve their existing audience engagement or to find new audiences.  Constructs are especially important when first creating a website because the text on the website should be written for people in the target audience. That allows a marketer to write about things that will interest the target audience.

As in every part of marketing, art and science blend together when creating constructs.  Some are so elaborate that the marketer creates a two or three page biography!

Writers construct new content that appeals to constructs like the portion of the  Debra construct shown here.  Even analogies and cultural references used when writing have a greater impact because they resonate with the audience.

If your organization had a large segment of Debras in its target audience, you would create products and services that appealed to them to ensure that your website addressed their likes and dislikes.  

With our constructs firmly in place for our client, we researched new content opportunities every week.  The information was gathered using software that analyzes stories appearing on sites like Google News and scores the subject matter and its growth potential.  With this data, we suggested the appropriate topics and keywords while also identifying competitors. We provided our client with this data each week before their editorial calendar was created.  Each article recommendation allowed the author to understand the reader in ways not possible before the technology we use was created.

Content Management Success

We could see new visitors come to the website and stay longer so we all knew the content management program was successful. Google validated our analysis with an email one Thursday evening.

 

Google email about traffic increase

 

 

This is not the first time we have seen emails like this, and if you have never seen one before, you should talk with us about content management and your website’s traffic.

News

Google and The Cleveland Clinic each lost an opportunity to control a new domain name type that could have influenced the already low reputation of medical information published online.

Both organizations have had their applications overruled to run a new TLD (top-level domain) for .med according to industry site Domain Name Wire.

The Top Level Domain Name Rush

dot org typeA top-level domain, called a TLD by insiders, is the short term that appears after a dot in an Internet address. Everyday examples of approved TLDs are .com, .org, .edu and so on.  The international organization that monitors and allows these names is called ICANN, which is just a very long acronym.  ICANN last allowed new TLDs in 2004.  Those included .asia, .mobi and others.  Four years earlier, less commonly used TLDs like .info and .biz joined the ranks of available suffixes.

ICANN proposed that the traditional 3 and 4 letter suffixes could become almost anything at a contentious 2008 meeting.  Each application required at $185,000 evaluation fee.

And the land rush started.

A startup named Donuts spent $57 million on 307 TLDs.  Google, using a subsidiary called Charleston Road Registry, applied for its trademarked terms as well as generic terms like .ADS, .LOVE and .APP.

ICANN keeps the evaluation fee regardless of the award.  That means a company like Donuts sent along more than $50 million for its applications.

The Big Deal – Why Generic TLDs are Dangerous

An ICANN panel ruled that neither The Cleveland Clinic nor Google were allowed to obtain the TLD called .med.   While either company could have registered all diseases, conditions and devices and then sold those names at “market value”, there existed, as in every generic word instance, an opportunity to steer traffic to one organization or charge exorbitant sums for a domain registration.  As a business leader you need to be learning more about domain names that could be registered in your industry and implement a brand protection plan.   You will always be able to protect your trademarked terms, but your competitors may already be planning to get the inside track on location-based or similarly generic names in your industry.

 

Source: “Google’s and Cleveland Clinic’s .Med top level domains rejected“, Domain Name Wire, 1/2/14
Source:  “New Generic Top-Level Domains“, ICANN, retrieved 1/2/14
Source: “New GTLD Current Application Status“, ICANN retrieved 1/2/14
Image via Wikimedia Commons