Alex Sass' blog

Alex Sass

Alex Sass is a digital marketing consultant with 15 years experience across the UK, USA and Europe.

http://www.AlexSass.co.uk

Echoer - You Heard It Here

echo

Like every 'social-media' guy, I dream of a world where the noise falls away. For years we've been helping brands and their PR firms kick off conversions about their products. We've created a deafening, hyperworld of mischief that flows ever more quickly towards becoming nonsense.

The fundamental truth is that there are only so many social media tools people can be expected to use and only so many ways they will want to interact with them. The smartphone brought the contact point into our hands. Facebook and Twitter fulfilled the rest. There's little you can't do on those platforms that really adds value to a person's every-day social desires. Or so I thought...

// more

Compers killed the Competition

winners

Budding brands and those with gazillions of fans alike have one thing in common - a hunger to give things away.

When you're looking at a report suggesting that the start-up cost of client acquisition through AdWords or traditional marketing is nearly always higher than the initial purchase price of your product, it's extremely tempting to brainstorm your way down to the lowest form of marketing...the give-away. Let me argue that we must not and should not go there.

// more

Facebook Fan or Foe

fb

As Facebook heads towards a record stock flotation that could value the company at £63 billion (and Mark Zuckerberg at £17.8 billion), we have to ask what role we, the users, play in its success.

The website relies on adverts to generate profit. Those can be directed either to an external website or to a branded Fan Page. Marketers realised early on that directing their ads to a Fan Page rather than a standard ‘Dot Com’, not only meant a better response (the site shared information about other friends who endorse the action), but also introduced the potential to grow massive marketing databases to which they could direct promotional messages at no further cost.

We’ve all swallowed the pill and a quick glance at your new timeline profile will show how many Fan Pages you have now ‘liked’- far more than you’d imagine, it’s not uncommon for single profiles to join hundreds a year.

// more