Digital marketing strategy is something that has long been divided into distinct, entirely separate silos. They can differ from organization to organization, but the biggest schism of all in digital marketing strategy is between paid and organic search.
Many marketers specialize in one or the other. SEOs and content marketers are on the organic side, SEM and PPC specialists on the paid. But approaching the two as completely different sports hobbles marketers and encourages the continued implementation of inefficient and ineffective digital marketing strategies.
So can’t we all just get along?
Organic Insights Should Be the Fuel of the Marketing Engine
Your entire marketing engine, digital and otherwise, should be informed by the deep insights available around organic search. We know that the majority of traffic comes from organic search, which means there are massive amounts of information out there that tell us what people are searching for.
The plain truth is that we also know consumers trust organic search results more, which means higher quality content that aligns with what they’re searching for has tended to appear in the organic section of the SERP. Your paid digital marketing strategy should be directly informed by that knowledge.
A Holistic Digital Marketing Strategy Is the Future
If your content is already appearing at the top of the Google search results for a targeted search term, is it also necessary to pay for space on that same SERP? That’s a waste of marketing resources and speaks more to the unnecessary separation of digital marketing activities than a strong, holistic digital marketing strategy.
Paid and organic search need to be approached together, in tandem. Here’s a key scenario that showcases what is possible when you approach your digital marketing strategy holistically:
2. Build value-driven, optimized content targeting those keywords organically using organic insights around customer voice, search intent, and keywords.
3. Deploy a paid search strategy that buys you real estate for important search terms you don’t currently rank for while you work your way up the rankings, especially for more competitive keywords.
4. Make sure the content behind your paid strategy continues to provide customers with the same value they expect from organic results.
Paid links should not be restricted to advertisements or generic content, they should deliver just as much value to your customers and prospective customers as your organic content does. People don’t ignore paid links because of some inborn distaste for them, they are just associated with low-value content because that’s how they’ve been used in the past.
Paid search should not mean bad content; instead, use the insights you glean from your customers’ organic search behavior to strategically use your paid search budget to support high value content in tandem with your efforts on the organic side of search.
Remember that all of your marketing should put your customers first. Whether it’s on a billboard or in a blog post or a PPC link, the purpose of your content is bettering the lives of your customers: connecting them with information or strategies, services or products that will bring value to them.
Understanding What Your Customers Value
Data is important, but a strong digital marketing strategy is about more than just data: it’s about the insights you glean from it, the why behind specific search terms. As you consider future marketing campaigns informed by organic insights, ask yourself:
How do you know what will bring your customers value? By applying organic insights to every facet of your digital marketing strategy. Approaching paid search with the same mindset as we apply to organic search and content marketing is key to a successful holistic digital marketing strategy.
And that applies to other elements of your marketing strategy as well: display ads, sponsored social posts, email marketing, and more. The more you understand about your customer and their behavior online, the more value you can provide. Organic search insights are about helping you help people.
Wikipedia is one of the most (if not THE most) authoritative sources on the internet. With an average of 8 billion pageviews every single month and over 6 million articles posted only in the English version of the colossus, Wikipedia claims its well deserved spot as the 5th most visited website of the planet.
Yet, it does not serve any ads to its users. How is this possible? Every other site you visit on a daily basis probably runs ads to survive. How come the 5th most visited site in the world doesn’t? Can it survive solely on donations?
And… is there any way you can promote yourself on Wikipedia, even if it’s forbidden? Let’s find out.
Even though there might be no way to directly advertise on Wikipedia, there are clearly ways you can get your brand or message on it. However, self promotion in a very… promotional manner is prohibited. For example, autobiography is not recommended as it cannot be truly objective. In fact, nobody close to you should actually write about you, your company or your products. You can still do it, though. But the risk of it being rejected is high.
But as long as you stick with the community’s standards, you’re definitely good to go. Before we get to the actual things you can do, I’ll share a couple of old stories with you regarding online advertising and Wikipedia.
1. Marketing Play
The famous tire manufacturer Pirelli used it to boast about its advertising prowess, some time ago. Their technique, according to the ad, was to “doctor” Wikipedia articles in a somewhat novel way: by replacing the pictures previously used to illustrate certain Pirelli and tire-related articles with higher-quality images but with a twist. In their own words, what was characteristic of the new images was that “the Pirelli brand appeared on every single image in a super contextual way, turning the image into a powerful ad placement.”
What Pirelli did was to “improve” Wikipedia articles about the brand with high-quality images from their own bank which had the brand name visible in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. While some images only had the brand name visible on tires (not very in-your-face), others were much more obvious, having Pirelli banners at the center and race cars barely in the background. The idea apparently came from advertising agency Havas Digital. Regardless where it came from, it caused quite a stir.
However, hold on your hats, ‘couse it was all fake!
Wikipedia’s reaction was swift and decided that it was all a fake. All changes are carefully and closely tracked by a fierce team of Wikipedia editors. If you’re a brand, that goes double for you. So what were the chances for Pirelli to deploy those changes long enough so that they’d get to capture them for the tire company’s ad? Planting images would ring as big an alarm bell as planting words or links. Administrators of the online crowdsourced encyclopedia were quick to set the record straight and emphasize that their photographs policies are very clear and favor Wikimedia Commons content over proprietary content, even when image quality might be higher for the latter.
There were even people who checked and confirmed at the time that no attempts had been made to change photos on the advertised articles . Perhaps somewhow ironically (depending on your definition of the word), Pirelli didn’t catch that boat even after the incident: there is no mention about this incident on the Wikipedia page for Pirelli, or anywhere else in the encyclopedia, for that matter. But despite that and the fact that Pirelli itself later admitted to it all being a fake and carried out as a guerilla marketing stunt, the idea of “cracking” Wikipedia was planted in the minds of marketers everywhere.
The video was removed from Pirelli Brazil’s Youtube channel , yet copies of the video continued to create uproar. Ralph Traviati, the company’s spoke person stated that the video produced by Harvas was only a demonstration of an initiative that was never implemented. Yet, knowing Wikipedia’s policy towards advertising, why would anyone try to have such an initiative? However, the PR did their part well and some reactions were spawned on Twitter as well, as you can see in the screenshot above.
If you care about your time, don’t waste it on trying to do anything like that. It will get flagged and removed quickly. There are over 100.000 active users and over 1000 admins ready to ban your account and IP. Pirelli was successful in this because it got some coverage in the media. Fake news isn’t very appreciated, however the marketing play above isn’t something people will necessarily dislike.
2. Conflict of Interests
A perhaps even bigger scandal developed in the fall of 2012 and involved accusations of product placement on Wikipedia. What happened was that the Did You Know (DYK) section on Wikipedia was seemingly assaulted by articles about Gibraltar. Sure, it’s an interesting territory, but to appear 17 times in the DYK section in a single month is a feat that borders the unbelievable. Mostly because it is hard to believe that it would pop up “randomly” so many times in a single month (all 17 times happened in August 2012).
So how did a territory of only 2.6 square miles make rounds on Wikipedia’s front page more times than any other subject (bar the Olympics)?
It turns out that these articles were all promoted by Wiki gatekeeper Roger Bamkin, who, incidentally, also happened to have a contract with the government of Gibraltar to publicize the territory on the online encyclopedia. Of course, most Wikipedia editors and board members have other daily jobs, but they’re not supposed to act on them while working for and on Wikipedia. But even though Bamkin’s actions were intuitively wrong, they were in a somewhat gray area: after all, he didn’t go and edit the articles in Gibraltar’s favor (a much more serious offense), he just gave them a gentle push to the front section.
This gray area caused quite a stir among Wikipedia’s editors, with reactions ranging from disinterested to heated and everything in between. Some users even proposed the banning of the involved users. Wikipedia owner Jimmy Wales even came out and declared himself “disgusted” about the situation and requested a five-year ban on the perpetrators. Despite Wales’ attempts at dealing with the situation, things did not get better.
Just months after the original scandal, once the media agitation died out, Gibraltar came back strong in the DYK section.
So why nothing happened at the time? To put it simply, it’s because Jimmy Wales may be the owner, but he’s not the boss. In fact, there is no boss.
That is the beauty but also the problem with crowd-sourced initiatives: they work at a price. And the price is that sometimes there is no conclusion following a dispute.
To us, Jimmy Wales’ idea about the five-year ban might sound reasonable, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to sound the same to the people who are actually doing the work. The talks involving “Gibraltarpedia” on the Wiki talk pages seem never-ending, and opinions about the five-year ban range from “a bit excessive” to “a flat-out terrible idea”. And these are not users who are happy about the Gibraltar scandal (or at least they don’t seem to be), but rather users who seem to genuinely think about the impact of such a measure in the long run.
We invite you to take a look at the screenshot below and judge for yourself weather the Gibraltarpedia follows the rules imposed by Wikipedia itself. Not exactly, huh?
This trick can actually be used if you create a new page on Wikipedia. If you nominate your article it can appear on the HomePage of Wikipedia which could generate a significant amount of traffic. However, certain criteria must be met, like the article not being older than 5 days.
3. Getting Links from Wikipedia for SEO
SEO is also a form of marketing, so getting editors to link to you will help you, one way or another. The links might result in direct traffic or ranking boosts.
I’m sure you’re going to say something about all the links being nofollow, but I can counter that. Nofollow links can actually help you rank better. So if you can get relevant nofollow links, don’t hesitate to do it. Especially from such a highly authoritative source like Wikipedia.
However, creating an entire article requires a significant amount of knowledge. It’s not as easy as editing one. You also have to respect all Wikimedia’s fair use guidelines, otherwise you risk working hours for nothing.
You can start creating by using Wikipedia’s Article Wizard. It’s a good idea to first start with some edits, then work your way up to modifying sections or creating articles from scratch. Wikipedia likes interlinking between its own pages, so make sure you do some of those. Then, you can even start using your own articles/content as sources. A popular method is the broken link building method.
If you’re looking for topics to write about, you can check out the requested articles list. You can in fact list your own article there to request another editor to write it. However, it might take years if not forever for someone to pick it up, as the list is huge and, as I said, the number of contributors is dropping.
4. Paying Editors to Write or Edit
A quick hack into getting listed on Wikipedia or even getting a link might be paying a contributor to write your article or edit an existing one. However, this is easier said than done, as contributors that are paid must disclose this on their profile.
This is pretty much the same story as with SEO paid links. You must disclose the payment through the ‘nofollow’ tag.
You’ll probably find many ‘contributors’ there willing to do this for you. However, they’re basically doing what you would do. Create a fake account, post or modify something, write it poorly, not disclose it and then get banned.
Instead, stick to either the Reward Board, where you can ask existing editors to make some changes or work for you (considering it respects the guidelines, of course) in exchange for a financial reward.
Another way is to rely on professional teams from PR and advertising agencies like Ahn & Co. or EthicalWiki. They both provide guideline compliant Wikipedia writing services and even offer money-back guarantees against deletion. But one thing’s clear: they will be unbiased, so if you did something significantly wrong, it will probably be there. Even if they don’t add it, other editors will.
5. Google’s ‘Mentioned on Wikipedia’ Rich Snippets
One cool side effect of being listed on Wikipedia is the increased chance of being listed into Google’s Rich Results Snippets.
source: thesempost.com
Although suspected to be from WikiPedia, we wouldn’t truly know where the info was coming from unless Google revealed it after multiple complaints from users. The message “Mentioned on Wikipedia” solves the mystery. Thanks to Wikipedia’s well implemented structured data, Google is able to display the magic carousel.
But how can you get there? Well… the first step is to obviously get your brand listed. If it isn’t there, make sure you get there. You should also be listed in the appropriate category page. You can either do it yourself or hire someone to do it for you. Just be careful who you pick.
After that, there’s not much you can do to influence the order of these brands. I don’t know for sure, but it seems like the very popular ones are also the first to show. These snippets don’t even trigger everywhere. I couldn’t get a single one to trigger on my side, for example. Maybe Google’s just testing out.
One smart thing to do would be to follow the framework of a company that’s already listed. If they’ve done it, then it means that they’re doing something right. For example, the first brand from the example above has a very small and incomplete page. They even get some yellow flags, regarding promotional content, which Wikipedia clearly states:
Purina’s page is definitely more detailed and lacking any warnings, but Google doesn’t really seem to care about that. As long as it’s listed in the appropriate category, it can get displayed first.
It seems like Google has a preference for snatching content off Wikipedia to display it in its snippets. If you can get it right and list your content in the right place, you might benefit from being listed number 0 on Google.
Why Doesn’t Wikipedia Serve Ads?
There are many reasons why Wikipedia does not serve ads to its users. All of them combined, make a pretty strong case. Wikipedia’s purpose is to be a source of education for everyone.
We all hate ads. As marketers, we accept them, but deep down inside our hearts, we don’t like them. Running ads on Wikipedia would affect user experience and, more importantly, would create conflicts of interest. Wikipedia is also open source. This means everyone can contribute. Contributors heavily oppose advertising, so running them might cause contributors to leave.
A full list of reasons against advertising on Wikipedia can be viewed here. You can, of course, find pro-advertising reasons as well. However, Wikipedia has been doing just fine without them, so far. We’ll talk about this in a bit.
If you do, however, see advertising on Wikipedia that references something else except Wikipedia itself, then you’re most probably infected with adware or malware.
source: Wikimedia blog
In order to protect yourself, use an anti-virus or anti-malware software to clean your computer. Malwarebytes is a good option, both free and paid. You can also check your browser for unwanted extensions that might cause the issue.
If you see an ad on Wikipedia, it’s probably a virus.
A virus that only shows ads is called an adware. In general, it’s harmless and acts pretty much as an affiliate link, generating some revenue for someone. However, you should clean it as soon as possible, because it can also be a malware, sending you into a rabbit hole and infect your entire network.
All things considered…
Wikipedia doesn’t allow and probably never will allow advertising. In other words, a brand can’t advertise there in a traditional way.
How Does Wikipedia Survive?
Before we get to those workarounds, though, let’s see how Wikipedia has survived so far with no ads at all. Wikipedia survives on donations from its users. This is easier said than done, as donation-based foundations at this scale are very hard to run.
The key term here is value. Since Wikipedia offers a lot of value to all of its users, they’re eager to help. This trust has been built in years of hard work, as Wikipedia wasn’t always all this big and didn’t have such a high amount of readers or donors.
If you’re not familiar with it, Wikipedia periodically displays fundraising banners to ask readers for donations. They take different forms. Here’s just one example:
Even I donate to Wikipedia from time to time. At first, I didn’t like it. It looked just like a beggar asking me for money on the street. However, I gave it some second thoughts when I searched it for an answer on my smartphone, during an exam at school (don’t tell anyone).
Since Wikipedia has so many users, it only needs 1% of them to donate an average of $ 5 to achieve it’s goal of about $ 50 million. After all… it’s just the price of a cup of coffee.
Wikimedia’s fundraising campaigns results are made public and you can actually learn some things from them, because they’re very smart. For example, A/B testing and adding a few lines in the sales copy of the fundraising campaign added a gain of 29% to the number of donations in the U.S.
source: wikimediafoundation.org
But free stuff isn’t enough. Even with no ads, 99.9% of the time people are still unhappy, pointing the irony of Wikipedia’s fundraising banner by saying “”Wikipedia Runs Ads Highlighting Their No-Ad Policy”.
Source: techcrunch.com
However, that’s Wikipedia’s least problem, as media can get pretty harsh when it comes to money coming from donations.
Donation Controversy
In the past few years, Wikipedia has expanded dramatically in terms of servers, staff and fundraising efforts. So much so that in the last couple of years they have well exceeded the needed amount to sustain the website for the year to come.
People have been asking where all this money goes and it’s a fair question. But Wikipedia has been attacked by numerous sources, claiming that they don’t actually need that much money and that they’ve been still asking for more. People have complained about staff travelling to pop concerts to take photos and for allocating $ 80,000 for a study on editing.
The truth is that The Wikimedia Foundation, responsible for Wikipedia and many other websites actually does a great job at handling the money, with a very high score from Charity Navigator. While the expenses are lower than the donations, it’s not uncommon for non-profit organizations to keep up money in a reserve, for unpleasant situations.
source: businessinsider.com
Now… if you’re so bothered that some employees will go to a couple of concerts off your $ 5 so you can happily cheat on your exams, then don’t donate. But, in my opinion, a donation based, non-profit organization doesn’t mean that the work there shouldn’t be fun. Do you expect anyone to sacrifice his days so you can know when XYZ was born?
And to question the necessity of an editing study really proves people have no idea what’s going on…
Contributors Number Going Down
Wikipedia is on a shortage of editors. It’s not easy to find volunteers to do this work. However, it has been working fine like this for a long time. People are still helping.
However, they’ve always been complaining about one thing. It’s confusing to edit. Editing can be complicated for newbies. Most readers don’t even have an idea that they can edit. So how can you make it easier for users to edit? How do you know what they like and what they don’t? What’s confusing and what’s not?
Well… you know, you might as well start off by conducting a study… Funded by donations… for a good reason.
Another thing people suggest is that Wikipedia makes a lot of money, while the hard working editors don’t. However, paying editors directly would mean that the project isn’t open source anymore. How would you differentiate between them? Which ones would have more power? Would they write objectively anymore? The only true way of Wikipedia working right is if it uses volunteer editors.
Paying contributors would result in conflicts of interest and would go against the foundation’s core values. Also, keep in mind that contributors are against running ads, which probably means they’re only doing this because they want to. The reasons why the number of contributors is going down are completely different and can go from difficult user interface to shortage of interesting topics or even conflicts with other contributors (such as deletionists).
Conclusion
Even though there isn’t a direct way to advertise on Wikipedia, there are other subtle ways you can get your name or brand out there. The best way to do it would be to actually contribute to Wikipedia. As long as your source is accurate, nobody will actually mind you placing a link. In fact, nobody will ever know it’s you. This, of course, unless you keep doing it a million times.
If you only edit one topic and always link to the same website it will be very obvious and someone will eventually put you down. Best thing to do is to actually stick to the rules. While it might not bring direct sales, having your name listed on Wikipedia is good for long term brand management.
What do you think of Wikipedia? Have you donated? Would you accept ads on it rather than donations? Have you ever built Wikipedia links to your website? How did that go? Let us know in the comments section, we’re very curious!
No marketing agency staffer feels good when they see a retail client getting reviews like this on the web.
But we can find out why they’re happening, and if we’re going above-and-beyond in our work, we just might be able to catalyze turning things around if we’re committed to being honest with clients and have an actionable strategy for their in-store improvements.
In this post, I’ll highlight some advice from an internal letter at Tesla that I feel is highly applicable to the retail sector. I’d also like to help your agency combat the retail blues headlining the news these days with big brands downsizing, liquidating and closing up shop — I’m going to share a printable infographic with some statistics with you that are almost guaranteed to generate the client positivity so essential to making real change. And, for some further inspiration, I’d like to offer a couple of anecdotes involving an Igloo cooler, a monk, reindeer moss, and reviews.
The genuine pain of retail gone wrong: The elusive cooler, "Corporate," and the man who could hardly stand
“Hi there,” I greeted the staffer at the customer service counter of the big department store. “Where would I find a small cooler?”
“We don’t have any,” he mumbled.
“You don’t have any coolers? Like, an Igloo cooler to take on a picnic to keep things cold?”
“Maybe over there,” he waved his hand in unconcern.
And I stood there for a minute, expecting him to actually figure this out for me, maybe even guide me to the appropriate aisle, or ask a manager to assist my transaction, if necessary. But in his silence, I walked away.
“Hi there,” I tried with more specificity at the locally owned general store the next day. “Where would I find something like a small Igloo cooler to keep things cold on a picnic?”
“I don’t know,” the staffer replied.
“Oh…” I said, uncomfortably.
“It could be upstairs somewhere,” he hazarded, and left me to quest for the second floor, which appeared to be a possibly-non-code-compliant catch-all attic for random merchandise, where I applied to a second dimly illuminated employee who told me I should probably go downstairs and escalate my question to someone else.
And apparently escalation was necessary, for on the third try, a very tall man was able to lift his gaze to some coolers on a top shelf… within clear view of the checkout counter where the whole thing began.
Why do we all have experiences like this?
“Corporate tells us what to carry” is the almost defensive-sounding refrain I have now received from three employees at two different Whole Foods Markets when asking if they could special order items for me since the Amazon buyout.
Because, you know, before they were Amazon-Whole Foods, staffers would gladly offer to procure anything they didn’t have in stock. Now, if they stop carrying that Scandinavian vitamin D-3 made from the moss eaten by reindeer and I’ve got to have it because I don’t want the kind made by irradiating sheep wool, I’d have to special order an entire case of it to get my hands on a bottle. Because, you know, “Corporate.”
Why does the distance between corporate and customer make me feel like the store I’m standing in, and all of its employees, are powerless? Why am I, the customer, left feeling powerless?
So maybe my search for a cooler, my worries about access to reindeer moss, and the laughable customer service I’ve experienced don’t signal “genuine pain.” But this does:
This is genuine pain.When customer service is failing to the point that badly treated patrons are being further distressed by the sight of fellow shoppers meeting the same fate, the cause is likely built into company structure. And your marketing agency is looking at a bonafide reputation crisis that could presage things like lawsuits, impactful reputation damage, and even closure for your valuable clients.
When you encounter customer service disasters, it begs questions like:
Could no one in my situation access a list of current store inventory, or, barring that, seek out merchandise with me instead of risking the loss of a sale?
Could no one offer to let “corporate” know that I’m dissatisfied with a “customer service policy” that would require me to spend $ 225 to buy a whole case of vitamins? Why am I being treated like a warehouse instead of a person?
Could no one at the pharmacy see a man with a leg wound about to fall over, grab a folding chair for him, and keep him safe, instead of risking a lawsuit?
I think a “no” answer to all three questions proceeds from definite causes. And I think Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, had such causes in mind when he recently penned a letter to his own employees.
“It must be okay for people to talk directly and just make the right thing happen.”
“Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the "chain of command." Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere.
A major source of issues is poor communication between depts. The way to solve this is allow free flow of information between all levels. If, in order to get something done between depts, an individual contributor has to talk to their manager, who talks to a director, who talks to a VP, who talks to another VP, who talks to a director, who talks to a manager, who talks to someone doing the actual work, then super dumb things will happen. It must be ok for people to talk directly and just make the right thing happen.
In general, always pick common sense as your guide. If following a "company rule" is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, such that it would make for a great Dilbert cartoon, then the rule should change.” - Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla
Let’s parlay this uncommon advice into retail. If it’s everyone’s job to access a free flow of information, use common sense, make the right thing happen, and change rules that don’t make sense, then:
Inventory is known by all store staff, and my cooler can be promptly located by any employee, rather than workers appearing helpless.
Employees have the power to push back and insist that, because customers still expect to be able to special order merchandise, a specific store location will maintain this service rather than disappoint consumers.
Pharmacists can recognize that patrons are often quite ill and can immediately place some chairs near the pharmacy counter, rather than close their eyes to suffering.
“But wait,” retailers may say. “How can I trust that an employee’s idea of ‘common sense’ is reliable?”
Let’s ask a monk for the answer.
“He took the time...”
I recently had the pleasure of listening to a talk given by a monk who was defining what it meant to be a good leader. He hearkened back to his young days, and to the man who was then the leader of his community.
“He was a busy man, but he took the time to get to know each of us one-on-one, and to be sure that we knew him. He set an example for me, and I watched him,” the monk explained.
Most monasteries function within a set of established rules, many of which are centuries old. You can think of these guidelines as a sort of policy. In certain communities, it’s perfectly acceptable that some of the members live apart as hermits most of the year, only breaking their meditative existence by checking in with the larger group on important holidays to share what they’ve been working on solo. In others, every hour has its appointed task, from prayer, to farming, to feeding people, to engaging in social activism.
The point is that everyone within a given community knows the basic guidelines, because at some point, they’ve been well-communicated. Beyond that, it is up to the individual to see whether they can happily live out their personal expression within the policy.
It’s a lot like retail can be, when done right. And it hinges on the question:
“Has culture been well-enough communicated to every employee so that he or she can act like the CEO of the company would in wide variety of circumstances?”
Or to put it another way, would Amazon owner Jeff Bezos be powerless to get me my vitamins?
The most accessible modern benchmark of good customer service — the online review — is what tells the public whether the CEO has “set the example.” Reviews tell whether time has been taken to acquaint every staffer with the business that employs them, preparing them to fit their own personal expression within the company’s vision of serving the public.
An employee who is able to recognize that an injured patron needs a seat while awaiting his prescription should be empowered to act immediately, knowing that the larger company supports treating people well. If poor training, burdensome chains of command, or failure to share brand culture are obstacles to common-sense personal initiative, the problem must be traced back to the CEO and corrected, starting from there.
And, of course, should a random staffer’s personal expression genuinely include an insurmountable disregard for other people, they can always be told it’s time to leave the monastery...
For marketing agencies, opportunity knocks
So your agency is auditing a valuable incoming client, and their negative reviews citing dirty premises, broken fixtures, food poisoning, slowness, rudeness, cluelessness, and lack of apparent concern make you say to yourself,
“Well, I was hoping we could clean up the bad data on the local business listings for this enterprise, but unless they clean up their customer service at 150 of their worst-rated locations, how much ROI are we really going to be able to deliver? What’s going on at these places?”
Let’s make no bones about this: Your honesty at this critical juncture could mean the difference between survival and closure for the brand.
You need to bring it home to the most senior level person you can reach in the organization that no amount of honest marketing can cover up poor customer service in the era of online reviews. If the brand has fallen to the level of the pharmacy I’ve cited, structural change is an absolute necessity. You can ask the tough questions, ask for an explanation of the bad reviews.
“But I’m just a digital marketer,” you may think. “I’m not in charge of whatever happens offline.”
If you were a retail brand C-suite and were swallowing these predictions of doom with your daily breakfast, wouldn’t you be looking for inspiration from anyone with genuine insight? And if a marketing agency should make it their business to confront the truth while also being the bearer of some better news, wouldn’t you be ready to listen?
What is the truth? That poor reviews are symptoms smart doctors can use for diagnosis of structural problems. What is the better news? The retail scenario is not nearly as dire as it may seem.
Why let hierarchy and traditional roles hold your agency back? Tesla wouldn’t. Why not roll up your sleeves and step into in-store? Organize and then translate the narrative negative reviews are telling about structural problems for the brand which have resulted in dangerously bad customer service. And then, be prepared to counter corporate inertia born of fear with some eye-opening statistics.
Print and share some good retail tidings
Print your own copy of this infographic to share with clients.
At Moz, we’re working with enterprises to get their basic location data into shape so that they are ready to win their share of the predicted $ 1.4 trillion in mobile-influenced local sales by 2021, and your agency can use these same numbers to combat indecision and apathy for your retail clients. Look at that second statistic again: 90% of purchases are still happening in physical stores. At Moz, we ask our customers if their data is ready for this. Your agency can ask its clients if their reputations are ready for this, if their employees have what they need to earn the brand’s piece of that 90% action. Great online data + great in-store service = table stakes for retail success.
While I won’t play down the unease that major brand retail closures is understandably causing, I hope I’ve given you the tools to fight the “retail disaster” narrative. 85% more mobile users are searching for things like “Where do I buy that reindeer moss vitamin D3?” than they were just 3 years ago. So long as retail staff is ready to deliver, I see no “apocalypse” here.
Investing time
So, your agency has put in the time to identify a reputation problem severe enough that it appears to be founded in structural deficiencies or policies. Perhaps you’ve used some ORM software to do review sentiment analysis to discover which of your client’s locations are hurting worst, or perhaps you’ve done an initial audit manually. You"ve communicated the bad news to the most senior-level person you can reach at the company, and you"ve also shared the statistics that make change seem very worthwhile, begging for a new commitment to in-store excellence. What happens next?
While there are going to be nuances specific to every brand, my bet is that the steps will look like this for most businesses:
C-suites need to invest time in creating a policy which a) abundantly communicates company culture, b) expresses trust in employee initiative, and c) dispenses with needless “chain of command” steps, while d) ensuring that every public facing staffer receives full and ongoing training. A recent study says 62% of new retail hires receive less than 10 hours of training. I’d call even these worrisome numbers optimistic. I worked at 5 retail jobs in my early youth. I’d estimate that I received no more than 1 hour of training at any of them.
Because a chain of command can’t realistically be completely dispensed with in a large organization, store managers must then be allowed the time to communicate the culture, encourage employees to use common sense, define what “common sense” does and doesn’t look like to the company, and, finally, offer essential training.
Employees at every level must be given the time to observe how happy or unhappy customers appear to be at their location, and they must be taught that their observations are of inestimable value to the brand. If an employee suggests a solution to a common consumer complaint, this should be recognized and rewarded.
Finally, customers must be given the time to air their grievances at the time of service, in-person, with accessible, responsive staff. The word “corporate” need never come into most of these conversations unless a major claim is involved. Given that it may cost as much as 7x more to replace an unhappy customer than to keep an existing one happy, employees should be empowered to do business graciously and resolve complaints, in most cases, without escalation.
Benjamin Franklin may or may not have said that “time is money.” While the adage rings true in business, reviews have taught me the flip side — that a lack of time equals less money. Every negative review that cites helpless employees and poor service sounds to my marketing ears like a pocketful of silver dollars rolling down a drain.
The monk says good leaders make the time to communicate culture one-on-one.
Tesla says rules should change if they’re ridiculous.
Chairs should be offered to sick people… where common sense is applied.
Reviews can read like this:
And digital marketers have never known a time quite like this to have the ear of retail, maybe stepping beyond traditional boundaries into the fray of the real world. Maybe making a fundamental difference.
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We’ve all heard the term “less is more”. And we’ve been told this applies for landing pages too. I.e. your forms should be short and only ask for only the bare minimum of required information if you want to convert.
However, when used across the board, this advice can backfire.
As an example, one of the main questions someone typically has when faced with a landing page is is how much your offer will cost. But if the offer on your landing page is for a free quote, you can’t necessarily disclose pricing on the page. When there’s no pricing, but instead a form requiring a name, phone number, and email, the visitor knows:
They’re going to need to talk to someone to get an answer to their question (they’re well aware you can’t give a customized quote from such limited info), plus, prospects are very reluctant to give their information out to just anyone.
They can click the back button and find a competitor that will give them what they want faster.
So why would we expect a form with super generic fields to be compelling enough for someone to engage with us in all cases?
As we’ve found at our agency KlientBoost, by increasing the amount of steps and the amount of form fields, we could actually increase conversion rates. The key here for us has been the order in which we present our steps and what info we ask for first.
Can more form fields really increase conversions?
As you may know, adding form fields goes against everything we’ve typically been advised to do:
You can find the sources for the above here, here, and here.
And while there are certainly cases in which fewer form fields are best, we’ve found adding more of the right form fields in progression can help ease conversion anxiety. When done correctly, it can take your free quote/lead generation landing pages to the next level.
At our agency we call our multi-step form approach the Breadcrumb Technique – think Hansel and Gretel where the breadcrumbs lead them in the right direction.
Experimenting with the Breadcrumb Technique
This is the landing page version of the sales technique called the “Yes Ladder”. It’s the art of eventually getting to what you want (the conversion) as a marketer, by getting visitors to say yes to much smaller requests first.
Click above to see a larger image of our landing page form flow. As each step progresses, the questions become more personal in nature.
Instead of having one page and one form to capture leads, you spread the form fields across two or more steps. So potential leads that visit the first page via your ads will fill in a short form and, after clicking the CTA button, they’re directed to the next step.
The first step starts with the least personal questions that allow the visitor to stay anonymous, whereas the second (and possible additional steps) ask for more, (albeit) reasonable, personal information. Here’s an example from one of our clients ZipLending. Their landing page offers a quote for rates on mortgages:
Notice the questions being asked in the step one form:
What kind of property are you considering?
What is your estimated credit score?
What is your desired loan amount?
All fairly low threat questions that allow the prospect to stay anonymous but feel like they’re going to get a quality answer they’re looking for, tailored to them.
Next, they’re directed to the second step form fields:
This step asks for more personal information, but logically reminds the prospect we need this information to send custom rates their way.
And while I can’t share the nitty gritty numbers of this test, I can share some high-level results. After the multi-step changes were made in the form above, we were able to bring in 35 more leads for ZipLending from March 2017 to May 2017. The client also noticed they were really high quality leads because of the qualifying questions we had included in our first step.
When we experimented with a multi-step form for another client, Garza Law, we were able to steadily increase the number of leads, bringing in 66 more in March 2018 than in December 2017, for example. Here’s a look at that:
Depending on the industry you’re working with and the typical value of a lead, 35-66 more leads in a given month can be a huge upgrade for a client and it’s why we’re thrilled to be able to deliver this via the multi-step form approach.
Why the BreadCrumb Technique is a cool experiment
If you want to try this with your landing pages, on the first step form, you set up questions pertinent to what the prospect might ask had they called you on the phone. This establishes the custom nature of what they will receive in return.
In the particular example we’ve outlined above, the visitor is interested in getting a no-obligation quote. So surely we’d need certain information on what they’re looking for to be helpful, and because the prospect understands this they’re more willing to participate for the perceived, increased value.
Replacing highly personal, red-flag-raising questions in the first step with questions that help the prospect hone in on exactly what they’re looking for will not only grow your conversions, but often improves lead quality as well.
Additionally, on the ZipLending page, notice the the headline changes between step one and two to let people know that they’re not yet finished with the process.
The “get rates” CTA button text also changes to “send rates”. If the language does not differ from your step one to step two, this could cause a drop in conversions as people may think the form just refreshed and they’re done with the process.
Remember: all your landing page forms need to be GDPR compliant by May 25, 2018 (featuring privacy policies and opt-in checkboxes). Learn how to make your landing pages compliant by design here.
The psychology backing up this technique
After filling out the initial questions in step one, the last step of filling out the more sensitive fields like name, email, phone number becomes much easier because of compliance psychology.
Dr. Robert Cialdini said it best:
“Once we’ve made a choice, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.” Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion
In other words, once you commit to small things, you’re more likely to continue onto bigger commitments aligned with your initial decision.
Scott Fraser and Jonathan Freedman also conducted research on how to get people to say yes. They went door to door asking people to put up a sign that read: “Drive Carefully” in their front yard, but only 20% of people agreed to this.
They then did the same test in a nearby neighborhood, but this time they asked people to put much smaller signs in their yard. This created the opportunity to get them to eventually say yes to putting up the original, larger signs.
Next time around, 76% people agreed to put up the larger signs compared to the original 20%. Psychology baby!
Following the multi-step model designed to ease visitors into a commitment, here’s another successful built-in-Unbounce landing page example from one of our clients:
The first step
The first form step asks about what the prospect needs.
The second step
The second step, reminding the prospect that what they want is almost ready to go.
Notice how the first step asks for make, model, and year of the car. In this first step, make sure to ask questions that are super easy for the visitor to answer, but also strongly relate to your offer.
Successful multi-step forms weren’t a one-time thing for us
What’s cool is that this multi-step landing page technique has worked for us at KlientBoost several times for different clients.
Below you can see our client Mention’s Unbounce landing page offering their free demo, Auto Buyer’s landing page for their offer on your vehicle, and Watchex’s estimate for purchasing your Rolex. These campaigns all followed the same breadcrumb technique:
Client example: Mention.
Another client example: Auto Buyer’s.
Another client example: Watchex.
Progress bars can help light the way
When it comes to multi-step landing pages, something to consider testing is adding a progress bar, or a step wizard. This is especially handy when you have more than two steps, like the following example:
Step 1 says 0% complete.
Step 2 let’s the user know that this is the last step before completion.
The wizard signals to people just how much they will need to fill out, which can help ease any uncertainty about how much information is required.
In our experience, we’ve found it works best to include the wizard starting on the second step form fields and not the first. Visitors are more likely to continue through the whole process if they start the process, as per compliance psychology.
How do you try out The Breadcrumb Technique on your Unbounce landing pages?
It’s easy! Instead of having your usual one-step form, head to your form confirmation dialog and make your first-step’s form destination direct to the url of your second step (See below).
When you select the form in the Unbounce builder, you will see options on the right of where the form confirmation goes. Under confirmation, select “Go to URL”, then paste in the url of the second step form, and make sure that the “Append form data to URL” is checked.
For the second step of the form, you must make sure a very crucial step is completed, otherwise the information from your first step will not pass over and you will not receive a full lead. See below:
You will need to create hidden fields with the same field IDs of the form fields on your first step. If they don’t match, the information will not pass over. As long as you have all fields from the first step as hidden fields on the second step, you should be just fine.
Now that your first and second step are linked together correctly, you can continue with your regularly scheduled programming of sending the second step form to your form confirmation dialog (or a thank you page). All done!
Unbounce has an easy multi-step function
There’s always more than one way to do something! Although this requires some development work, Noah Matsell from Unbounce has some helpful tips on creating multi-step forms within the same page/url. This means you won’t need to paste in the second form url as the destination of your first form.
Note that this workaround allows you to create a form with one field per step, so this may not work for those who would like to have several form fields appear in a given step, however you can test out what works for you.
To create these multi-step forms on the same page:
Step 1. Create your form in Unbounce.
Step 2. Create a new button element for your ‘Next’ button and one for your ‘Previous’ button. Keep in mind when positioning these buttons (and your form submission button) that only one field will be shown at a time.
Step 3. Copy the JS from ‘multistep_form.js’ and paste it into the Javascripts section of your page with placement ‘Before Body End Tag’.
Step 4. Update the script with the ID of your ‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ button elements. Tip: Make sure you exclude the ‘#’ in the ID.
Step 5. Copy the CSS from ‘multistep_form.css’ and paste it into the Stylesheets section of your page.
That’s it! See the whole process and the required code here.
Test out the technique on your next landing page
It might take a bit of practice to figure out the correct questions to be asking on your first step, or to find out the type of language to use on your form; but that’s what conversion rate optimization is all about: testing and trying new things to see what sticks. Ask the questions your visitors want answers to, and ask the questions your sales people need answers to to give a prospect a more personal answer.
If you give this a try, we would love to hear about your experience with a comment below.
Remember, all your forms (multi-step or otherwise) need to be GDPR compliant by May 25, 2018. See how to make your landing pages compliant by design and allow a visitor to opt-in here.
Wikipedia is one of the most (if not THE most) authoritative sources on the internet. With an average of 8 billion pageviews every single month and over 6 million articles posted only in the English version of the colossus, Wikipedia claims its well deserved spot as the 5th most visited website of the planet.
Yet, it does not serve any ads to its users. How is this possible? Every other site you visit on a daily basis probably runs ads to survive. How come the 5th most visited site in the world doesn’t? Can it survive solely on donations?
And… is there any way you can promote yourself on Wikipedia, even if it’s forbidden? Let’s find out.
Even though there might be no way to directly advertise on Wikipedia, there are clearly ways you can get your brand or message on it. However, self promotion in a very… promotional manner is prohibited. For example, autobiography is not recommended as it cannot be truly objective. In fact, nobody close to you should actually write about you, your company or your products. You can still do it, though. But the risk of it being rejected is high.
But as long as you stick with the community’s standards, you’re definitely good to go. Before we get to the actual things you can do, I’ll share a couple of old stories with you regarding online advertising and Wikipedia.
1. Marketing Play
The famous tire manufacturer Pirelli used it to boast about its advertising prowess, some time ago. Their technique, according to the ad, was to “doctor” Wikipedia articles in a somewhat novel way: by replacing the pictures previously used to illustrate certain Pirelli and tire-related articles with higher-quality images but with a twist. In their own words, what was characteristic of the new images was that “the Pirelli brand appeared on every single image in a super contextual way, turning the image into a powerful ad placement.”
What Pirelli did was to “improve” Wikipedia articles about the brand with high-quality images from their own bank which had the brand name visible in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. While some images only had the brand name visible on tires (not very in-your-face), others were much more obvious, having Pirelli banners at the center and race cars barely in the background. The idea apparently came from advertising agency Havas Digital. Regardless where it came from, it caused quite a stir.
However, hold on your hats, ‘couse it was all fake!
Wikipedia’s reaction was swift and decided that it was all a fake. All changes are carefully and closely tracked by a fierce team of Wikipedia editors. If you’re a brand, that goes double for you. So what were the chances for Pirelli to deploy those changes long enough so that they’d get to capture them for the tire company’s ad? Planting images would ring as big an alarm bell as planting words or links. Administrators of the online crowdsourced encyclopedia were quick to set the record straight and emphasize that their photographs policies are very clear and favor Wikimedia Commons content over proprietary content, even when image quality might be higher for the latter.
There were even people who checked and confirmed at the time that no attempts had been made to change photos on the advertised articles . Perhaps somewhow ironically (depending on your definition of the word), Pirelli didn’t catch that boat even after the incident: there is no mention about this incident on the Wikipedia page for Pirelli, or anywhere else in the encyclopedia, for that matter. But despite that and the fact that Pirelli itself later admitted to it all being a fake and carried out as a guerilla marketing stunt, the idea of “cracking” Wikipedia was planted in the minds of marketers everywhere.
The video was removed from Pirelli Brazil’s Youtube channel , yet copies of the video continued to create uproar. Ralph Traviati, the company’s spoke person stated that the video produced by Harvas was only a demonstration of an initiative that was never implemented. Yet, knowing Wikipedia’s policy towards advertising, why would anyone try to have such an initiative? However, the PR did their part well and some reactions were spawned on Twitter as well, as you can see in the screenshot above.
If you care about your time, don’t waste it on trying to do anything like that. It will get flagged and removed quickly. There are over 100.000 active users and over 1000 admins ready to ban your account and IP. Pirelli was successful in this because it got some coverage in the media. Fake news isn’t very appreciated, however the marketing play above isn’t something people will necessarily dislike.
2. Conflict of Interests
A perhaps even bigger scandal developed in the fall of 2012 and involved accusations of product placement on Wikipedia. What happened was that the Did You Know (DYK) section on Wikipedia was seemingly assaulted by articles about Gibraltar. Sure, it’s an interesting territory, but to appear 17 times in the DYK section in a single month is a feat that borders the unbelievable. Mostly because it is hard to believe that it would pop up “randomly” so many times in a single month (all 17 times happened in August 2012).
So how did a territory of only 2.6 square miles make rounds on Wikipedia’s front page more times than any other subject (bar the Olympics)?
It turns out that these articles were all promoted by Wiki gatekeeper Roger Bamkin, who, incidentally, also happened to have a contract with the government of Gibraltar to publicize the territory on the online encyclopedia. Of course, most Wikipedia editors and board members have other daily jobs, but they’re not supposed to act on them while working for and on Wikipedia. But even though Bamkin’s actions were intuitively wrong, they were in a somewhat gray area: after all, he didn’t go and edit the articles in Gibraltar’s favor (a much more serious offense), he just gave them a gentle push to the front section.
This gray area caused quite a stir among Wikipedia’s editors, with reactions ranging from disinterested to heated and everything in between. Some users even proposed the banning of the involved users. Wikipedia owner Jimmy Wales even came out and declared himself “disgusted” about the situation and requested a five-year ban on the perpetrators. Despite Wales’ attempts at dealing with the situation, things did not get better.
Just months after the original scandal, once the media agitation died out, Gibraltar came back strong in the DYK section.
So why nothing happened at the time? To put it simply, it’s because Jimmy Wales may be the owner, but he’s not the boss. In fact, there is no boss.
That is the beauty but also the problem with crowd-sourced initiatives: they work at a price. And the price is that sometimes there is no conclusion following a dispute.
To us, Jimmy Wales’ idea about the five-year ban might sound reasonable, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to sound the same to the people who are actually doing the work. The talks involving “Gibraltarpedia” on the Wiki talk pages seem never-ending, and opinions about the five-year ban range from “a bit excessive” to “a flat-out terrible idea”. And these are not users who are happy about the Gibraltar scandal (or at least they don’t seem to be), but rather users who seem to genuinely think about the impact of such a measure in the long run.
We invite you to take a look at the screenshot below and judge for yourself weather the Gibraltarpedia follows the rules imposed by Wikipedia itself. Not exactly, huh?
This trick can actually be used if you create a new page on Wikipedia. If you nominate your article it can appear on the HomePage of Wikipedia which could generate a significant amount of traffic. However, certain criteria must be met, like the article not being older than 5 days.
3. Getting Links from Wikipedia for SEO
SEO is also a form of marketing, so getting editors to link to you will help you, one way or another. The links might result in direct traffic or ranking boosts.
I’m sure you’re going to say something about all the links being nofollow, but I can counter that. Nofollow links can actually help you rank better. So if you can get relevant nofollow links, don’t hesitate to do it. Especially from such a highly authoritative source like Wikipedia.
However, creating an entire article requires a significant amount of knowledge. It’s not as easy as editing one. You also have to respect all Wikimedia’s fair use guidelines, otherwise you risk working hours for nothing.
You can start creating by using Wikipedia’s Article Wizard. It’s a good idea to first start with some edits, then work your way up to modifying sections or creating articles from scratch. Wikipedia likes interlinking between its own pages, so make sure you do some of those. Then, you can even start using your own articles/content as sources. A popular method is the broken link building method.
If you’re looking for topics to write about, you can check out the requested articles list. You can in fact list your own article there to request another editor to write it. However, it might take years if not forever for someone to pick it up, as the list is huge and, as I said, the number of contributors is dropping.
4. Paying Editors to Write or Edit
A quick hack into getting listed on Wikipedia or even getting a link might be paying a contributor to write your article or edit an existing one. However, this is easier said than done, as contributors that are paid must disclose this on their profile.
This is pretty much the same story as with SEO paid links. You must disclose the payment through the ‘nofollow’ tag.
You’ll probably find many ‘contributors’ there willing to do this for you. However, they’re basically doing what you would do. Create a fake account, post or modify something, write it poorly, not disclose it and then get banned.
Instead, stick to either the Reward Board, where you can ask existing editors to make some changes or work for you (considering it respects the guidelines, of course) in exchange for a financial reward.
Another way is to rely on professional teams from PR and advertising agencies like Ahn & Co. or EthicalWiki. They both provide guideline compliant Wikipedia writing services and even offer money-back guarantees against deletion. But one thing’s clear: they will be unbiased, so if you did something significantly wrong, it will probably be there. Even if they don’t add it, other editors will.
5. Google’s ‘Mentioned on Wikipedia’ Rich Snippets
One cool side effect of being listed on Wikipedia is the increased chance of being listed into Google’s Rich Results Snippets.
source: thesempost.com
Although suspected to be from WikiPedia, we wouldn’t truly know where the info was coming from unless Google revealed it after multiple complaints from users. The message “Mentioned on Wikipedia” solves the mystery. Thanks to Wikipedia’s well implemented structured data, Google is able to display the magic carousel.
But how can you get there? Well… the first step is to obviously get your brand listed. If it isn’t there, make sure you get there. You should also be listed in the appropriate category page. You can either do it yourself or hire someone to do it for you. Just be careful who you pick.
After that, there’s not much you can do to influence the order of these brands. I don’t know for sure, but it seems like the very popular ones are also the first to show. These snippets don’t even trigger everywhere. I couldn’t get a single one to trigger on my side, for example. Maybe Google’s just testing out.
One smart thing to do would be to follow the framework of a company that’s already listed. If they’ve done it, then it means that they’re doing something right. For example, the first brand from the example above has a very small and incomplete page. They even get some yellow flags, regarding promotional content, which Wikipedia clearly states:
Purina’s page is definitely more detailed and lacking any warnings, but Google doesn’t really seem to care about that. As long as it’s listed in the appropriate category, it can get displayed first.
It seems like Google has a preference for snatching content off Wikipedia to display it in its snippets. If you can get it right and list your content in the right place, you might benefit from being listed number 0 on Google.
Why Doesn’t Wikipedia Serve Ads?
There are many reasons why Wikipedia does not serve ads to its users. All of them combined, make a pretty strong case. Wikipedia’s purpose is to be a source of education for everyone.
We all hate ads. As marketers, we accept them, but deep down inside our hearts, we don’t like them. Running ads on Wikipedia would affect user experience and, more importantly, would create conflicts of interest. Wikipedia is also open source. This means everyone can contribute. Contributors heavily oppose advertising, so running them might cause contributors to leave.
A full list of reasons against advertising on Wikipedia can be viewed here. You can, of course, find pro-advertising reasons as well. However, Wikipedia has been doing just fine without them, so far. We’ll talk about this in a bit.
If you do, however, see advertising on Wikipedia that references something else except Wikipedia itself, then you’re most probably infected with adware or malware.
source: Wikimedia blog
In order to protect yourself, use an anti-virus or anti-malware software to clean your computer. Malwarebytes is a good option, both free and paid. You can also check your browser for unwanted extensions that might cause the issue.
If you see an ad on Wikipedia, it’s probably a virus.
A virus that only shows ads is called an adware. In general, it’s harmless and acts pretty much as an affiliate link, generating some revenue for someone. However, you should clean it as soon as possible, because it can also be a malware, sending you into a rabbit hole and infect your entire network.
All things considered…
Wikipedia doesn’t allow and probably never will allow advertising. In other words, a brand can’t advertise there in a traditional way.
How Does Wikipedia Survive?
Before we get to those workarounds, though, let’s see how Wikipedia has survived so far with no ads at all. Wikipedia survives on donations from its users. This is easier said than done, as donation-based foundations at this scale are very hard to run.
The key term here is value. Since Wikipedia offers a lot of value to all of its users, they’re eager to help. This trust has been built in years of hard work, as Wikipedia wasn’t always all this big and didn’t have such a high amount of readers or donors.
If you’re not familiar with it, Wikipedia periodically displays fundraising banners to ask readers for donations. They take different forms. Here’s just one example:
Even I donate to Wikipedia from time to time. At first, I didn’t like it. It looked just like a beggar asking me for money on the street. However, I gave it some second thoughts when I searched it for an answer on my smartphone, during an exam at school (don’t tell anyone).
Since Wikipedia has so many users, it only needs 1% of them to donate an average of $ 5 to achieve it’s goal of about $ 50 million. After all… it’s just the price of a cup of coffee.
Wikimedia’s fundraising campaigns results are made public and you can actually learn some things from them, because they’re very smart. For example, A/B testing and adding a few lines in the sales copy of the fundraising campaign added a gain of 29% to the number of donations in the U.S.
source: wikimediafoundation.org
But free stuff isn’t enough. Even with no ads, 99.9% of the time people are still unhappy, pointing the irony of Wikipedia’s fundraising banner by saying “”Wikipedia Runs Ads Highlighting Their No-Ad Policy”.
Source: techcrunch.com
However, that’s Wikipedia’s least problem, as media can get pretty harsh when it comes to money coming from donations.
Donation Controversy
In the past few years, Wikipedia has expanded dramatically in terms of servers, staff and fundraising efforts. So much so that in the last couple of years they have well exceeded the needed amount to sustain the website for the year to come.
People have been asking where all this money goes and it’s a fair question. But Wikipedia has been attacked by numerous sources, claiming that they don’t actually need that much money and that they’ve been still asking for more. People have complained about staff travelling to pop concerts to take photos and for allocating $ 80,000 for a study on editing.
The truth is that The Wikimedia Foundation, responsible for Wikipedia and many other websites actually does a great job at handling the money, with a very high score from Charity Navigator. While the expenses are lower than the donations, it’s not uncommon for non-profit organizations to keep up money in a reserve, for unpleasant situations.
source: businessinsider.com
Now… if you’re so bothered that some employees will go to a couple of concerts off your $ 5 so you can happily cheat on your exams, then don’t donate. But, in my opinion, a donation based, non-profit organization doesn’t mean that the work there shouldn’t be fun. Do you expect anyone to sacrifice his days so you can know when XYZ was born?
And to question the necessity of an editing study really proves people have no idea what’s going on…
Contributors Number Going Down
Wikipedia is on a shortage of editors. It’s not easy to find volunteers to do this work. However, it has been working fine like this for a long time. People are still helping.
However, they’ve always been complaining about one thing. It’s confusing to edit. Editing can be complicated for newbies. Most readers don’t even have an idea that they can edit. So how can you make it easier for users to edit? How do you know what they like and what they don’t? What’s confusing and what’s not?
Well… you know, you might as well start off by conducting a study… Funded by donations… for a good reason.
Another thing people suggest is that Wikipedia makes a lot of money, while the hard working editors don’t. However, paying editors directly would mean that the project isn’t open source anymore. How would you differentiate between them? Which ones would have more power? Would they write objectively anymore? The only true way of Wikipedia working right is if it uses volunteer editors.
Paying contributors would result in conflicts of interest and would go against the foundation’s core values. Also, keep in mind that contributors are against running ads, which probably means they’re only doing this because they want to. The reasons why the number of contributors is going down are completely different and can go from difficult user interface to shortage of interesting topics or even conflicts with other contributors (such as deletionists).
Conclusion
Even though there isn’t a direct way to advertise on Wikipedia, there are other subtle ways you can get your name or brand out there. The best way to do it would be to actually contribute to Wikipedia. As long as your source is accurate, nobody will actually mind you placing a link. In fact, nobody will ever know it’s you. This, of course, unless you keep doing it a million times.
If you only edit one topic and always link to the same website it will be very obvious and someone will eventually put you down. Best thing to do is to actually stick to the rules. While it might not bring direct sales, having your name listed on Wikipedia is good for long term brand management.
What do you think of Wikipedia? Have you donated? Would you accept ads on it rather than donations? Have you ever built Wikipedia links to your website? How did that go? Let us know in the comments section, we’re very curious!
