Full Transcript:

Ed Kohler: Welcome to the Technology Evangelist podcast, this is Ed Kohler and I am here with Benjamin Higginbotham as usual and today in studio we have Ben Deneen. Ben tell us who you are with and what are you here for?

Ben Deneen: Hello everyone, thanks for having me here. I work with Minnesota School of Business which actually encompasses several different educational institutes within this state and in Utah, IPR Minnesota School of Cosmetology, new horizons computer centers, Utah Career College, etcetera, etcetera and we keep expanding quite a bit, so I…

Ed Kohler: What you do there?

Ben Deneen: I am essentially there Interactive Marketing - Director, myself. Everything that has to deal with SEO/SEM paper click marketing where obviously email campaigns all on those lines.

Ed Kohler: So, is this as interactive marketing kind of relatively new venture for those schools or is it, it sounds like…

Ben Deneen: In some degree yes, I would say that traditionally it is relatively new like probably within last three to four years. That’s when they really started getting into, I have only been there for about a year and a half, they really started to get into paper click advertisement essentially and really noticed immediately what results I can get off of it, so, but more recently we have obviously ramped up in every area we use now, exact target for email, opt-in emails and just essentially trying to engage all of our target audience.

Ed Kohler: So, how does school use, paper click marketing?

Ben Deneen: Well, for us our name is absolutely great for our natural search, so if you are looking for a business school at Minnesota, it is fantastic. Well, Minnesota School of Business offers accounting degrees, message therapy, all kinds of different career college degrees and careers which are kind of tough to get up in natural search. I mean you can do it, essentially, but you have a lot of competition out there, so with paper click advertisement we can really drive potential customers, potential students right to a specific line in page or one of our course descriptions, on that course description we would have a form that we can capture their information and essentially we get a cost pre-lead of that, then we can roll that into our entire marketing form, so.

Ed Kohler: And I see, you are measuring cost pre-leads and then tracking those leads through to find out how many registrations you are getting out of that?

Ben Deneen: Absolutely, we have brought now at right from whichever specific key word all the through to whether that person turn into an enrollment , if they how far the long they got as far as like and this is probably given away a lot of our stuff.

Ed Kohler: What is you best key word?

Ben Deneen: Minnesota School of Business, which seems ridiculous that we would buy that both, it is actually one of our best, that is our best key word or globe college, whichever specific school that we are talking about usually the name itself is our best key word, we buy it because one of our competitors might buy it and try to at least be in the paid advertisement above us, so.

Ed Kohler: You may as well as much real estate you can on this search results page.

Ben Deneen: Right, absolutely.

Ed Kohler: And if they give like crazy, the ROI has to be awesome as well…

Ben Deneen: Yeah, exactly makes me look good at my job.

Ed Kohler: Right, something has to it I suppose?

Ben Deneen: Yeah, I agree.

Ed Kohler: So, reason for bringing here today was you mentioned that you were experimenting with Google Radio and this is relatively new service and still kind of beta and so what you can tell us about that?

Ben Deneen: Well, we have only been looking into it for last few weeks here and incidentally this is been overshadowed by Google TV ads which, some of you might know what’s that, on Tuesday they had a press release, Google had press release there working with Dish Network now, but what we can talk about that may be a little bit later, but Google Radio it is interesting that Google is venturing often to your more of your traditional marketing areas, they have already tried this with Google Publications and which is gone up now to them I know they are trying to begin with actually quite a bit more success, it sounds like, but with Google Radio what I have known is right away is that it is built right into your Google AdWords council, so it is very familiar for me going in there took me about, I just had a test campaign, it took me about 10 minutes to setup one and then I showed it to my boss, who is 62-years-old and he is, it is good to say that, he is not far stretched that he is technically not very savvy, but even he was like well this is amazing, it is really self-explanatory, so.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Lets backup?

Ben Deneen: OK.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Describe what is Google Radio?

Ben Deneen: I am sorry, I apologize. It is part of the Google AdWords Council, but Google has actually partnered with many radio stations, so you can upload your mp3 ads which you put everything in mp3 or Wave format, I think they accept also and actually create your ads in house and upload them to Google within their council and they will play on select radio stations, within your demographic however, you would select it, so, it is just taking the ad agency out of bit, or working directly with that individual radio stations sales person, so.

Ed Kohler: Are you making your ads in house or are you working with outside firms who do that?

Ben Deneen: We, actually one of our schools is Broadview, so we actually can do our TV commercials and radio ads all in-house, but what’s interesting about you bring that up, Google actually can pair you up with somebody and you give them a budget of how much money you want to spend in though carry up with somebody.

Ed Kohler: OK, so they setup with third vendors and then…?

Ben Deneen: Yeah, I mean I think as a vendor you can actually contact them and say “hey, I want to be one of your preferred vendors”, so.

Benjamin Higginbotham: What kind of radio stations is this going to play on? Is this going to be…this isn’t going to be my top 10 radio stations in the market I assume, I assume this can be the smaller stations?

Ben Deneen: Well, what’s it is interesting you bring that up, because as you go through the first part of it, I mean you just can create your budget and few other things, you choose your demographics, male/female and in our case it is male/female, 18 to 35, for most of our campuses and you get down to the area where you are selecting the formats or the stations, you would think “OK, well which stations are we going to, how can we play this on” and it doesn’t give you an option to choose the stations, it just tells you, I think your three choices here are like, play my ad on all stations that the farthest reach essentially. Then it gives you all the different Jazz stations, news stations and it tells you how many it has within your target market. So, if we are taking Minneapolis match over here which probably incomes St Cloud and all the way over to Hudson, Wisconsin. We have about 11 stations, in it shows which if one in pop, one in news, one in adult contemporary and then it actually goes down further into, it is called Arbertron, people aren’t familiar with that, that’s radio’s version of news and ratings. So, you can go through and select it and really go down, but at no point are you able to say I want KDWB or something like that.

Ed Kohler: Imagine they are doing that because they are buying their inventory at rock bottom prices and…

Ben Deneen: Yeah, absolutely.

Ed Kohler: So, they want to compete against the stations themselves?

Ben Deneen: Yeah, that’s my assumption too. I mean they don’t want to, they are trying to get Google is trying to get the inventory aligning with stations and you are absolutely right and they are getting this at such an amazing cost, we did, after I did this first one, I just showed it to our marketing director and he said, here is what we get this as far as like what we can guarantee for number of plays and it is about us was about tenth of the cost of our normal buy.

Ed Kohler: Really?

Ben Deneen: Yeah.

Ed Kohler: Let’s price that if we can.

Ben Deneen: Yeah, I mean, he just let up, he is like lets buy as much as we can, right now and so it might go, hold on lets research this a little bit more, but…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Research measures …

Ben Deneen: Yeah, exactly.

Ed Kohler: Well, you can screw up a lot if the cost is 10% of what normally is?

Ben Deneen: Yeah, absolutely.

Ed Kohler: You can make three times more mistakes, and still come up with that?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Awesome.

Ben Deneen: Yeah, exactly.

Ed Kohler: So, does Google offer you much in terms of reporting?

Ben Deneen: Well, I think it is getting closer and they are, obviously whenever you are dealing with something where you can’t measure in the sense of clicking through and you have absolute analytics on it, it is always a little bit skewed, but I think what’s pretty cool about this is actually the reporting what you will get back from the reporting is, you can select your slots and you can reserve times and it is varied, it brings really into your control which is great, because the amount of time spent dealing with radio stations and what not, can be utilized somewhere else, but after you are reporting that you get back is actually when the ad played, which ad played and you can actually click on the ad and it brings up the spot and you can listen to it, but you know the exact time. Well, there is a couple of ways you can measure this, you could actually have a 800 number or something along those lines, where people call in. I tend to think that, that doesn’t necessarily work much anymore, because at least my gut feeling and I can actually prove this a lot to our analytics is that people does go Google, the name if it is a response half of that radio advertisement or TV advertisement or typing the address. So, one way to measure it is look at that exact time, look at your analytics and see your spike and your web traffic, so that’s probably the easiest and it is all with in the same council what’s great about is like more we are not waiting on our ad agency of we are waiting on the radio station to report back, so we can actually look at, “oh, we can attribute this extra traffic to that time”, it is all right there for us and we can go as far as exported into XML and all continued within one report, so. It is bringing us closer to have them everything together, so.

Ed Kohler: Sure. What kind of minimum ad buys are people looking at, if they want just start experimenting with this?

Ben Deneen: I think you can go down to, if you have a small demographic area 100 bucks per week or something like that, it is pretty small. I did for example through an 500 per week for the Fargo area, Fargo /Moorhead Valley area and it did it for the entire quarter, I tried to max it out and I got, it is on a CPM basis, I got something like a million gross impressions or something like that and it was only $1,400. Well, that would have been close to $20,000 on a traditional buy, I am sure, but we have to wait for the results, I mean talk to you guys about a month here and see if we actually got these exact results of their predicting, so.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Can I go nationals as well, can I just say this is a national spot, go across blank the country?

Ben Deneen: Absolutely, Western Unions using it right now, I think 1800 flowers or something like that is having western union’s, yeah you can buy everything nation wide and…

Benjamin Higginbotham: How much would a nationwide spot cost? I mean just rough idea?

Ben Deneen: Pull up your computer, it is fairly I think your cost your CPM is probably right around 2 bucks and if you do a nationwide just blanket, every demographic and headed all,

Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s just a guess?

Ed Kohler: We are on radio?

Ben Deneen: Yeah, absolutely which I am assuming it is Western Union rather is using it right now. Yeah, so it is very cost effective and the winners really are what I see at least is your in-house ad agencies, radio stations probably a double edged sword did, they kind of thinking well, “trust your old radio stations has been going down for years, now” and they could either charge their full price through their sales person in-house or get whatever 20% your Google. Well, 20% is better than nothing.

Ed Kohler: You don’t have to pay a sales person anymore?

Ben Deneen: Right, exactly.

Ed Kohler:  So, is there much hand holding at all in the process or is it really trying to be fully automated process, the way they are with more traditional AdWords?

Ben Deneen: It is pretty much fully automated other than what the exception now you actually have to create the ad, so but other than that you can have 500 different ads and they are scheduling for different times, I think it is great for, if your type of business that has like a grand opening or some big special sale and you just want to flood the radio market within a certain time. You can schedule ahead have it all ready and really have all that control on your own hands and yourself. It is fantastic for businesses that really like to have control over their marketing.

Ed Kohler: So, you are now experimenting with that TV as well?

Ben Deneen: Yeah, I actually just got Google TV ads, it is actually in beta also and I just got, finally got my invitation for that and so we have about may be about $5 million per year TV budget and we will absolutely utilize this right away and Google has aligned with Echo-star which I think is Dish Network and it is pretty interesting and it’s cutting curious to see what it does go, but obviously they get far better data from having a set-top there and they know exactly what TV was on during certain time when they played your ad. So, you are going to get a lot better data, even though you don’t know somebody who is sitting in the room, so lot of people will be there TV on, but they would likely to think that they know exactly who is sitting there, yeah absolutely when we will probably start working on that next week and get it going, so.

Ed Kohler: A word about that where they say they are not going to provide too much information about the actual family that did that set-top box?

Ben Deneen: Yeah.

Ed Kohler: Then I didn’t turn everyone into Nielson family for example.

Ben Deneen: Right.

Ed Kohler: But, I bet there are plenty of people that would be going to do that if they could get a few bucks off on their satellite?

Ben Deneen: I know a few, I actually…

Ed Kohler: Yeah?

Ben Deneen: Yeah, my girl friend’s mother loves to do that, she has the Nielson box in their and she plugs it away, but she would absolutely be somebody who would do that.

Ed Kohler: Making up opportunity there.

Ben Deneen: Exactly.

Ed Kohler: So, Google loves that data.

Ben Deneen: Oh yeah absolutely and I think the more they can bring it in and make everything transparent which is better for people, like me they are working in marketing, so.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, have you looked at the Google Video interface at all is it the same as the audio, audio seems like it make sense in mp3 file or Wave files easy.

Ben Deneen: Right.

Benjamin Higginbotham: A video file is specifically in a format that televisions don’t understand, little harder.

Ben Deneen: It is, and honestly I don’t say I have not had time to, I just got the invitation, so it is going to take.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Do you have any other Invites? Can you send me an Invite.

Ben Deneen: I could probably do, lets see I will talk to, I think his name is Daniel over Google, I’ll see if he can send, he is my "in".

Ed Kohler: We will have to check back with you about that and also just to see how things workout with you for the radio side.

Ben Deneen: Sounds good.

Ed Kohler: Thanks a lot for your time.

Ben Deneen: Thanks for having me here.