The Future of Advertising (HBR Feature)

The upcoming issue of the Harvard Business Review (March 2013) will feature on on the future of advertising.  Advertising is an aspect of Marketing which allows a product to be publicized.  The general public needs to be made aware of the offerings of a company before sales can be generated; if there is no awareness, then how is the customer to know that something is available and being offered.

One of the HBR blog video from this edition is entitled: "Why Some Ads Go Viral and Others Don't", where Prof.Thales Teixeira from the Harvard Business School, talks about some techniques that could be used in making memorable advertising videos.

Another article I found fascinating is "How to Calculate the Value of a Like".  The author, Dan Zarrella wote his formula of calculation of VOAL (Value Of A Like) as such:

      L/UpM x (LpD x 30) x (C/L) x CR x ACV = Value Of A Like

where: 

L (Total Likes): The total number of audience members connected to your social media account. On Facebook, these are Likes of your page, and on Twitter, these are followers.

UpM (Unlikes-per-Month): The average number of fans who "unlike" your social network account each month. On Facebook, this is an "unlike," and on Twitter, this is an "unfollow."

LpD (Links-per-Day): The average number of times you're posting links, and potentially converting links driven from your social media account. On Facebook, this is the number of posts you're making, per day, that lead to a page on your website. On Twitter, this is the number of times, per day, you're Tweeting these kinds of links.

C (Average Clicks): The average number of clicks on the links to your site you're posting on your social media accounts.

CR (Conversion Rate): The average conversion rate of your website, from visit to sale or visit to lead. This can be an overall average, but for increased accuracy, use the conversion rate measured from traffic coming from the social network you're calculating.

ACV (Average Conversion Value): The average value of each "conversion." In this context, a "conversion" is the action you've used to measure CR for. It could be average sale price or average lead value. For increased accuracy, use the average conversion value of traffic coming from the specific social network.

Fascinating.  I will have to try this formula some time, to see if the VOAL (Value Of A Like) is something which works for me.  In fact, Dan also gave a link to a VOAL calculator.  So, for you marketers out there, if you are interested, try this formula out

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