Internetiturundus - interneta mārketings - internet marketing

Do not be afraid.

Advertisers in Estonia (and elsewhere in EU and US) are starting to shift more spend to the internet as they come under pressure to reduce traditional media budgets.

Clever online marketers inside client companies already have many of the tools and relationships in place to ride this economic downturn successfully.
In an uncertain economic climate where even some banks are becoming too afraid to lend to each other and businesses (and consumers) are finding it tougher to get loans, it is no surprise that Estonian companies are beginning to look very closely at their marketing and advertising budgets.
The axe is falling…

But what does this mean for online marketing in Estonia?

Well a clue is perhaps that in the last week we have had twenty or so enquiries so its not bad news for us.

Paradoxically, the economic squeeze is our (and other internet companies) opportunity to shine

Reduced budgets = companies looking for better advertising return on investment

Some international reports predict the biggest fall in advertising budgets for years BUT internet advertising spend is predicted to increase by double digit percentages and in many markets will probably see the largest rises of any advertising spend category.

2007 was another boom year for the internet in Estonia.

The growth of internet usage is continuing rapidly, thanks to ever-faster broadband connections and greater market penetration.
The internet is now often seen (by our clients and others) as a great way to reach targeted audiences quickly and effectively.

For Estonian marketers, we predict that online advertising will touch an ever growing audience and an increasingly diverse demographic.

Our experience with e-campaigns proves we can hit the tough to reach young male market but we are also finding success targeting women and older groups too now.

So, Estonian marketers CAN feel confident that the internet is a really reliable way to hit a BIG target audience, BUT marketing budgets ARE reducing so every Estonian Crown needs to be focused on the most effective e-channels and measuring performance is key.

It’s going to be really important to target carefully and not to waste on “big splashes”.
Pay for performance and performance measurement will come up as a subject time and time again in 2008/9.

Yes of course there is still room for branding campaigns - its not all about direct response but even the rules for branding are changing fast - often driven by internet behaviour.
Users/consumers are shaping brands and people turn increasingly to brands they have had positive interactions with online. (So long terms campaigns/strategies focussing on creating and sustaining online engagement should be considered carefully.)

Again, that’s good news for Estonian companies who have been experimenting (with more than just banner ads) over the past couple of years. They will have the edge.

Change won’t stop there.
Online publishers will have to become more accountable for results of clients’ banner ad campaigns - the ones that do will see fantastic growth, the ones that don’t will continue to disappoint their clients and the media agencies will have no choice but to shift spending to “alternative e-marketing”: things like – email marketing, search engine marketing, online PR (blogging, social media, link building etc.) etc etc etc.

Sad though it is (personal level) to see an economic downturn I am very excited about it from altex’s business perspective.
Our prediction for altex growth for this year is 100-300%

If you are an Estonian client marketer and you are not yet experimenting with e-marketing then “wake up and smell the coffee” as the Americans would say..

aeg eksperimenteerida TM is now truer than it ever was.

Maret was, and now is again, a very valuable member of the altex team.
About a year ago she asked for some time off to go holiday in Australia - Nice life for some …and now she’s just come back.
Hooray, we missed her.

Maret will focus on project management for some key altex clients and also help develop our CRM system.
When she is not busy doing those things she will dip into some creative project work and search engine marketing.

No doubt she will blog here soon too…I hope.

I love Estonia and it’s really great to be back (I have been living mostly in stinky London for last year and a half) but I guess I still have a lot to learn (apart from the language which I promise to study harder this summer - btw who wants to give me private lessons? -I’ll pay of course) about Estonian attitudes.

E!UK is almost upon us and, to be honest, despite the fact that well over 100 (about 150 I think) people will be there I had expected an even bigger response.

Why?

Well the people and the companies represented are really bl**dy good.

I have never seen such a good line up of e-marketers here in Estonia and I am not saying that just because we are organising the event.

Consider the pedigree of these three:

Golley Slater, a top 30 full service, ROI orientated, agency for over a decade (formed in 1957) employing over 300 people - Alastair is is their Interactive Services Director with 13 years experience.

Laura Bambach of GlueLondon : GlueLondon are the agency’s agency. Voted the most respected creative digital agency for 4 years running but “only” the 20th biggest in the UK. Winner of numerous awards including 3 CyberLions in 2007. Laura is the Creative boss aka Head of Art of a team of 100+

Jon Bains, Boss of Lateral has been doing groundbreaking work for Levi’s (and many others) for more than a decade. He’s is one of very few guru-techies with a solid understanding of marketing.

I could go on about Sam, Craig and Marcel too but the point I am trying to make here is that if Estonian marketers want more digital marketing gurus to come and “share” then its important to come to events like these.

I personally take some of the blame for the low turnout (I had hoped for 250 people) because I forgot that Estonian marketers don’t know all these UK companies or these speakers. I thought they were famous everywhere !

I wrote the E!UK event description for the website and I guess it doesn’t really persuade as well as it should. (I know it sucks a bit doesn’t it?)

In my defence I have had some personal health issues to deal with this last month which have sucked a great deal of my time (I am fine now - thanks)

Anyway it’s not too late to book..

Anyway I hope its a great event and if you are one of the ones there on Wednesday I hope you think so too.

If all goes well with E!UK we will do another one with UK speakers and other events with people in from other EU countries and Russia too…that’s the plan anyway.

The Forumoxford future technologies conference takes place on Fri 18 April 2008

Confirmed speakers include:

* Mark Selby - Nokia
* Social Marketing Intelligence, the Black Gold of the 21st Century - Alan Moore, Xtract
* Mobile Social Networking - Antonio Vince Stabyl, CEO, ItsMY
* Youth and Mobile and Music and TV - Luciana Pavan, MTV
* iPhone Applications - William Volk, CEO, MyNuMo
* User-generated Mobile Advertising - Jonathan MacDonald, Blyk
* Mobile Initiated Financial Services in the Developing World - Simon Cavill, Director, Mi-Pay Ltd
* How to Integrate Facebook with IMS - Niklas Blum, Fraunhofer FOKUS
* Browser Extensions (DOM extensions) and Accessing Device APIs - Ajit Jaokar, OpenAjax Alliance and David Pollington, Vodafone
* Delivering a Global Mobile Service - Cameron Doherty, CEO, Mobile Concierge
* Dawn of a New Mobility - Casual Computing: Thoughts on the Future of Mobiles, Service and Their Adoption - Christian Lindholm, Fjord
* An Example of Mobile Search in Poland, the Implementation of Google Search Appliance on Plus.pl - Krzysztof Proczka, Brand Manager, Polkomtel

I hope to be there

yes it’s true: altex is now in the porno business - that is if you trust the results of the system used by Playtech and their corporate network.
They use something called Fortiguard to filter network traffic.
I am told by a little bird that this (stupid?) piece of software flags:

URL: www.altex.ee/euk
Category: Pornography

I know some of the E!UK speakers are sexy but still it would take a very clever bot to detect that from their bios or maybe one of them is a secret porn star.

Still it might mean the E!UK is going to be even more interesting than we thought!

damn: how many spam bots will pick up on this post?

Here are the top 10 reasons why your grandpa is like Microsoft Word. Feel free to comment and add your own.

1. 1. It takes a while to get him up and running
2. 2. It’s good to know that he’s around even though you don’t really need him
3. 3. Most of what he suggests don’t make sense
4. 4. You can correct his errors as many times as you like - he’ll still keep making them
5. 5. The term “menu” does not necessarily mean you’re actually going to get something edible out of it
6. 6. You can spend hours while sitting with him around the table
7. 7. After a while you’ll know what to avoid
8. 8. If he catches a virus the whole family gets sick
9. 9. Every time he does not die, you feel like congratulations are in order
10. 10. When you run out of space, you’ll most likely to get rid of him first

Hope I wasn’t too harsh

Reimo Pettai died today (24 March 2008), aged 39, from stomach cancer.
He was a great friend of mine and funny, intelligent and a strong & proud Estonian who worked for Ministry of Foreign Affairs for over a decade.
He was the best man at our wedding and one of my wife’s best mates.
We saw him only yesterday and our last memory was of him smiling with a raised fist.

(originally posted yesterday, 24 March)

If you have any good memories of Reimo then share them here (in English or Estonian or any language you like)

We are honoured that this special Eturundus! event - E!UK - will be opened by Peter Carter, The British Ambassador to Estonia

E!UK is about building bridges between the digital marketing communities in UK and Estonia for mutual benefit.
6 top UK digital marketing experts will share their experience, knowledge and give some suggestions for modern Estonian agency and client marketers.
It’s a unique event. Don’t miss it.

Speakers (all presentations are in English but also with LIVE TRANSLATION TO ESTONIAN):

Sam Michel, MD of Chinwag (www.chinwag.com)
Digital Marketing Opportunities in the UK for Estonians

Marcel Udo, European MD of Eyewonder (www.eyewonder.com)
The Future of Banner Advertising and Rich Media
err actually Marcel is Dutch but Eyewonder Europe are based in London so we think that’s good enough

Alastair Cole, Interactive Production Director at Golley Slater Digital (www.golleyslaterdigital.com)
Swimming Against The Tide: Information Architecture and UI Design

Laura Bambach, Head of Art at Glue London and Co-Founder SheSays (www.gluelondon.com and www.shesays.org.uk)
Presentation title to follow

Jon Bains, Founder of Lateral (www.lateral.net)
Presentation title to follow

Craig Hanna, Training Director at e-consultancy (www.e-consultancy.com)
The Atomised Web

E!UK is possible thanks to cooperation between AngloEstonian and altex marketing with support from:
Best Marketing
Chinwag
e-consultancy.com
UK Trade & Investment
British Estonian Chamber of Commerce

E!UK is sponsored by Reval Hotels
Speakers will stay at Reval Park Hotel & Casino, Tallinn

Where: National Library of Estonia, Tallinn
When : May 7th 1-5pm
Cost: 2500eek + tax (10% discount for delegates booking and paying by March 31)
Information and advanced bookings: kris at altex dot ee tel: +372 6210029 skype: eppkris
We expect this event to sell out so we advise you to book early.

Some lucky E!UK delegates will also have access to speakers outside the main event to arrange meetings/do business.

1. Web design and software development agencies may be interested in outsourcing contracts and other forms of partnerships
2. Individuals might be interested in job opportunities in the UK.
3. Investors might be interested in business opportunities in both UK and Estonia.
4. Government stakeholders might be interested in the range of activities and discussions aimed at increasing trade between UK and Estonia
5. Marketing professionals may want to discuss “what works” and ideas & innovation (the buzzword for 2008)

Kuldmuna and Kandiline Muna are the names given to the advertising awards here in Estonia.
Translation: Golden Egg and Square Egg Awards.

I was honoured to be selected as a judge for the 2008 interactive awards and am looking forward to setting aside the time look closely at what I trust will be some inspiring, creative and measurably effective interactive work.

Here is the full list of judges (Estonian language).

And just in case you are wondering what might impress me? what might get my vote?
Well just this morning I discovered a new website that whilst not perfect (I won’t bore you with details) it is pretty amazing.
I guess it won’t stay like that and this is just a gimmick for launch but still…..

Turn the volume up, sit back and enjoy a shopping website launch like no other…. Hema (The Netherlands)

OK I know this technique is not new on TV or in fact on the web (I wonder if they were inspired by Alan Becker’s excellent work: Animation v Animator 2006 and the even better? part 2 in 2007

2007 was another successful year for altex.
We our achieved our turnover target of 100%+ growth (a sign of the spiraling demand for internet marketing, as opposed to just banner ads), made a healthy profit (all reinvested as it is every year) and most importantly retained almost every client (80-90% of our revenue is repeat business) as well as adding some important and welcome new ones such as SEB bank and Elion.

This success would not have been achieved without the commitment and high quality work of all the people on our great team but especially Tõnis Hinnosaar and Kris Keerov M IDM.

As a result the various altex shareholders unanimously approved to appoint Kris and Tõnis to the board and also give them shares in the company as a recognition of the faith and trust held in them and their abilities.

Tõnis is Head of Operations in Estonia and specialises, extremely successfully, in web analytics : Measuring and improving the performance of clients’ banner advertising campaigns and websites.

Kris splits most of her her time between marketing (including handling Eturundus! events) and managing major projects for key clients. She is also the first Estonian person to become a member of the international Institute of Direct Marketing.

Tõnis and Kris will play a key role in satisfying clients, engaging new team members (get in touch if you want to work with us), maintaining ambitious financial growth and keeping us ahead of the competitors that are sure to emerge this year (2008)

My (Robin) own role is changing (although I still focus on key clients projects) : expansion to Latvia, UK and Lithuania; Investor and partner relations; and business development strategy for our main activities:

altex marketing - European internet marketing agency based in Tallinn, London & Riga
Spindo Club (see www.spindo.eu)
AngloEstonian (an umbrella projects building bridges between digital media sectors in Uk and Estonia)
Eturundus! emarketing events

PS We have some other plans for 2008 but don’t want to spill the beans yet…watch this space….

PPS The only bad thing about appointing Kris and Tõnis to join me on the board is that they can now outvote me !! I had better watch out