The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the biggest trends in digital technology withing the past 5 years. However, discussion of Marketing applications for IoT, has been surprisingly limited. This new infographic from Marketo, gives a nice visual introduction to opportunities for Marketers in different sectors to engage and satisfy the needs of our customers using the IoT.
Importance:
Recommended link: Twitter announcement on objective-based campaigns
You may remember when Twitter started to monetise through offering ads to advertisers, the model was to use paid Promoted Tweets to encourage more followers, but it was lacking a way to directly prompt leads and sales. Then, in 2013 they launched Lead Generation cards that were particularly useful for business-to-business marketing.
Now, in a similar move to Facebook's new Call-to-action buttons, Twitter is making it easier to create ads that enable direct clickthrough to a website to meet objectives for leads and sales. The option is not entirely new since this was originally available in a US beta from August last year, but from 21 May 2015 all advertisers worldwide can use this new feature. For example, a retailer can now setup ads to encourage clickthrough to sale using this approach.
When you create a new ad campaign on Twitter you will be able to select a campaign objective such as website clicks or conversions in addition to the traditional Promoted Tweets to gain followers. Other options are also available for lead cards on Twitter or app installs.
Importance:
Recommended link: Google's preview of new mobile ad extensions
Google has responded to changes in users' searching behaviour as more people look for local services using their smartphones. In the introduction to this new feature, Google gives the example of changes in search behaviour...
"Google search interest in "near me" has doubled since last year,1 with 80% coming from mobile".
Google's research shows that in these 'moments', consumers have heightened expectations for immediacy and relevance — 4 out of 5 say they want search ads to be customized to their city, zip code or immediate surroundings.
The new ads shows three or four different businesses for location-related searches like “nearby auto repair.” As the example below shows, each ad unit will feature click-to-call and directions which can be easily followed-up on, for example by calling your business or visiting your store.
This feature is just one examples of extensions which are described in detail in our Google AdWords guide. Google uses Accor hotels to show how use of extensions can give significant benefits - in this case study Accord gained a 14% increase in incremental revenue by using extensions.
In 1999 Paco Underhill published Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. The first edition focused on offline or in store consumer retail behaviour. Although it was updated in 2009 to include online retail behaviour, it was still strongest for offline shopping.
This new retail research by Webloyalty and Columnino who specialise in the retail sector compares online and traditional shopping behaviour. We're recommending this in-depth report for retailers since it's a combination of consumer research, secondary research and market forecasting. The consumer research in this report is based on a survey conducted with a UK nationally representative poll of consumers. 2,068 consumers interviewed during January 2015.
The report assesses the well-known consumer buying process:
Browsing - Gathering Ideas - Checking Product details & Prices - Leading to buying the product
It compare cross-channel behaviour and use of different devices. According to this research, 87% of respondents with online access are visiting on-line stores to gather information on product and prices and search for general ideas. Though many are not serious buyers and 'not ready to buy' online, since many of the consumers in the survey identified that they are ' browsing just for fun'.
So how do consumers buy today? One example finding shows that consumers spend the most time in store (around 42 mins) compared to 23 minutes for on-line stores which is surprisingly long, but this is disclosed, not observed behaviour.
Although it's interesting, that at the same time they visit the store, consumers are engaging with technology and digital services since dwell time is high.
Download the full PDF report on the 'connected consumer'. For more insights on How We Shop, the John Lewis Retail report is a must-read for retailers.
As marketers, we know the value of a good online presence. We often talk about the importance of Google and of understanding the algorithms that govern the way businesses appear and are ranked in the Google search results. But we rarely talk about the rules that govern the algorithms themselves.
Since it’s inception in 1997, Google has strived to ‘organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’. From Panda (content) to Penguin (links) and Hummingbird (semantics), algorithm updates are intended to help Google to identify those pieces of content which are most likely to meet the searcher’s needs.
All of this culminates in a simple lesson for us all:
If you want to be successful online, you need to provide the highest quality, most useful, most relevant content to suit your target audience’s needs.
Online marketing isn’t just about understanding algorithms for optimising for the right keyword. Savvy marketers understand the importance of creating great content.
Whether you’re looking to reach an audience online or offline, you’ll need to have something worthwhile to say and share with them if the interaction is to have any impact.
In recent months, content marketing has become something of a buzz term as marketers strive to create great content to support their online and offline marketing efforts. As with all marketing campaigns, your content will be far more successful with planning. Here are some content marketing tools to help you now and into the future.
If you want to create great content that appeals to your target audience, you first need to be really clear on who that audience is. Who are you trying to talk to? What do you know about them and how can this help to guide the content you create for them?
I’ve run this exercise with my clients before and often, the first response is too broad. Ask who they’re targeting and they’ll say ‘holiday goers’ or ‘business owners’. But that’s not enough. You need to really dig deep into your target audience. If your business is B2B, consider the following about your target audience:
If your business is B2C, you’ll be considering similar things but swap out business related elements for things like life stage, where they live and so on.
Your task is to create a really full picture of your target audience. You’ll find that your audience can be segmented, which is great too. Re-run the exercise for each segment, involve your team (especially sales team) wherever possible, and you’ll end up with a much clearer picture of who you’re trying to target.
Many marketers, myself included, like to visualise these insights in the form of audience personas. A persona is an individual figure that’s represents a segment of your target audience; by giving them a name and a face, you empower yourself and your team to discuss very complex audience segments very easily - e.g. ‘Let’s talk about how best to target Tom’, or ‘Do you think this content would appeal to Jane?’.
If you would like to create personas (which I recommend), take a look at the Smart Insights customer persona toolkit, which will walk you through the persona creation process. I’ve created a simple example below of a potential customer for a plastics moulding company:
The next step in the content grid process is to identify the stories you want to share with your audience. What are your brand stories? Again, be specific and consider:
Here are some examples from some workshops I’ve run on this topic. I asked delegates what their brand stories were:
Often, these brand stories translate into slogans and form the basis for marketing campaigns throughout your company’s lifetime. One of my favourite examples is Innocent, the company famous for making smoothies and other food and drink items. Take a look at their company story page for inspiration.
So now you have a clear view of your target audience and have come up with a number of key brand stories that you want to tell. The next step is to cross-reference these in the form of a content grid.
Add your personas on one axis and your brand stories on the other. You can then use this to plan content which will appeal to each persona and each brand story, helping you to communicate everything you want to everyone you want to. Using the examples above, it might look something like this:
As you can see, by taking this approach, you can plan your content to meet the needs of your target audience and your business’ brand stories. You can then use this grid to plan out specific pieces of content.
If you’re struggling to come up with the content ideas to fill in the grid, have a look around at content your competitors are producing and read through trade publications, forums and social media relevant to your target audience.
You’ll be able to repeat this process next time you want to refresh your content plan, helping you to focus your long term strategy within the guidelines of the personas and brand stories - which will likely stay the same for your business well into the future.
Another tool we’ve used with our clients to help them plan their content strategy is that of the content target plan. Here, we scope out the content that is directly relevant to the product/service you’re trying to sell, and then go beyond that to understand more widely what your audience is interested in. Your personas will come in useful here too, enabling you to better ideate content with your audience segments in mind.
Consider the topics that are directly relevant to your products/services/business overall. What is directly relevant to you and what you offer? This is the core content in your plan, that which explains what you do and offer and enables your audience to buy from you.
I’ll use one of our clients Harvey as an example here. Harvey produce water softening products so their core content includes:
These elements cover the basics of their product and enable people to understand what they’re buying. I call this the ‘core’ content because it is so important to get it right. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to be creative with your content if you haven’t first addressed the clear and concise explanation of your product/service.
The next step is to consider what I call ‘funnel content’, this being the content that will draw people into your core content by appealing to their wider interests and concerns. Consider what content is relevant but not as closely connected to your product/service as your core content.
You may choose to categorise this funnel content by main theme or target audience segment. Here’s an example of how this might look for Harvey:
As you can see here, the content ideas have been categorised by theme, in this case ‘business management’, ‘homes and interiors’ and ‘health and wellbeing’. These are all themes which are relevant to Harvey - the water softening product is relevant to each of the themes - but is not directly about water softening itself.
Using this approach, you avoid the common error of self-promotion and focus instead on creating content that is not too far removed from your skill set but broad enough to appeal to your audience much higher up the buying funnel. By creating this kind of content, you are able to promote your business to a much wider audience.
We did this with Harvey; here are some examples from the core content and funnel content areas:
The water softener consumers’ guide explain to consumers everything they need to know when investing in a water softener. It covers what water softening is, how the product works and how to maintain the product, as well as where to buy it and how to install it.
The content is structured as a guide and can be downloaded as a PDF too.
The history of interior design piece was designed to appeal to homeowners and anyone interested in interior design.
With its modern, scrolling design and useful, interesting content, this piece has been viewed by over 70,000 unique visitors and linked to from over 90 different domains. It was also shared more than 2,000 times across social media, enabling Harvey to generate brand awareness amongst a much larger audience.
The final tool I’d like to share with you is actually a set of tools, readily available to anyone, for free, to help inform your content strategy.
The tools in question are forums and social media channels. Here, you can glean insight into your target audience; what interests them, what challenges them, what questions they ask and would like answered.
It’s more of a reactionary approach to content planning as you’re responding to what’s trending rather than planning ahead, but it can still work really well.
Here are some of my favourites:
Google Alerts is free to use. Simply head to http://ift.tt/hspf9M and you can set up an alert for any keyword or phrase you like - I advise all my clients to set one up for their brand name as standard.
Here, you can set up alerts for things like your product or service names, and for topics that you know to be of interest to your audience. Google will then email you daily or weekly with a summary of what’s been said across the web including those terms. Look out for people raising questions or sharing opinions.
You can then take these questions or opinions and use them to inspire your content. For example, we might set up an alert to notify us of 'nottingham' AND 'business', so we can see updates about Nottingham’s business scene. As we’re based in Nottingham, we may find value in creating content that responds to the themes or questions raised as it would help us to appeal to local businesses that we might want to work with.
I really like using Hootsuite as a tool for more intelligent Twitter management, and wrote an article on how best to use it, if you’re just getting started.
Through Hootsuite, you can set up streams which can alert you to tweets which use specific hashtags or keywords. Much like Google Alerts, this enables you to create content which responds to questions, opinions and challenges to better appeal to your target audience.
You can also follow Journalists on Twitter and monitor the hashtags they use via your streams. One example to follow is #journorequest, where Journalists share their requests for new content and comment.
Keep an eye on these and look out for opportunities to respond to the journalist’s requests, and to identify what is considered to be newsworthy in your industry and those you serve.
Reddit is a user-generated content hub, where users can add links to things they find interesting or start discussions with their peers.
This can be another great place to source new content ideas, based on what your target audience is talking about.
For example, I work with a company which sells holiday accommodation in the UK. Browsing Reddit’s UK section, I have found a thread which asks where the best hiking spots in the UK are. This would make a great piece of content for my client; we could create a guide to the best hiking spots in the UK, knowing that the topic is popular on Reddit and therefore answering a query which is likely to be relevant to our audience outside of Reddit too.
Again, look out for questions in particular as these can be great inspiration for blog posts or guides. Remember to post your content as a response to the thread that inspired it for added traction.
No matter how great your content marketing plan is, you’ll never see results from it if you don’t go ahead and create that content!
My advice to anyone putting together their content plan is to ensure it’s realistic.
Use these tools to put your plan in place, apply deadlines and get creating.
Then, monitor the results. Analyse the response to your content; did it receive the number of views you expected? Did you receive any enquiries? Was it picked up by the press or other websites? How well was it shared on social media? Analyse what worked well and what didn’t, to refine your strategy and do even better next time.
I’d love to know what tools you’re using to guide your content marketing strategy, and to answer any questions you might have. Feel free to leave me a comment below.
Thanks to Laura Hampton for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Laura is the digital marketing manager at Nottingham based digital agency Impression. She specialises in SEO, content marketing and social media and has worked across a range of industries including tourism, professional services, manufacturing and ecommerce. Follow her on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn or Google+.
I've been following Ian Lurie of digital agency Portent, Inc for a few years now, enjoying learning from the type of actionable insights around content marketing, SEO and broader Digital Marketing Strategy that I aspire to. So, I was intrigued to see what One Trick Ponies Get Shot was about - particularly since his new book offers the type of contrarian thinking that is all too rare in our Internet marketing echo-chamber. Certainly packed full of original thinking and advice which can change your approach as this interview shows.
Our interview is directly relevant to agencies owners and new biz dev folk, but his analysis will resonate with many and is also relevant for other types of professional B2B service businesses. Thanks for the interview Ian - I like your style!
I'm the original one-trick pony. In the first 5 years of my career, I'd walk into clients' offices and offer very tactical advice. My average relationship with a client lasted about a year. Then I clued in and got better at testing and basing tactical decisions on strategic goals and the numbers associated with those goals. Now, our average client relationship is closer to 3 years.
The book is relevant for any B2B organization selling a service. If you're frustrated about losing clients after doing a good job, the book talks about one possible solution.
Double frustration.
In our business client-agency relationships average 1-2 years. They often end something like this:
It's exhausting. Given how often it happens, I know it's not the clients. It's us. My team has some of the best experts in our industry - yes, I tend to brag about them - but we still see the same cycle play itself out.
We've been able to adjust our approach and reduce the number of times relationships follow that same downward spiral or at least extend positive client relationships.
What finally solidified the idea for me, though, was Portent's own experience with the companies that serve us. I've gotten frustrated with some of the services companies we hire: Accounting, IT, law, etc. all provide a service. So, I looked as those relationships: After a while, our providers go through the same kind of decline. They just go through the motions. I'll sometimes go to them and point out a new solution/idea. They'll say 'Oh, yeah, we should do that.' I walk away thinking 'I just had to point out a new solution to my vendor. What do I pay them for?'
I started writing down why I let our service providers go and realized we were all battling the same problem.
I first presented the idea in an article that did really well - http://ift.tt/1oN7P7r - and decided to write the book after that.
Connect strategy to tactics to real dollars. If you don't do that, you become a kind of tactical vending machine: You provide design, SEO, PPC, etc. As long as the client likes how you do the day-to-day work, you'll stick around. You're a good vending machine.
But no one remembers the kind of vending machine they used. Think about it - last time you bought a can of pop, what brand of vending machine did you use? What did it even look like? 99% of the time you won't remember.
So, when the client decides they don't like your tactical work often because of factors far beyond your control, or goes looking for a lower price, they move on to the next vending machine. Even if they hate the next vendor, they won't remember you. They'll just keep moving down the line.
Connect strategy to tactics to real dollars, then use that connection to broaden recommendations to related but different tactics. For example, if a client hires you to do SEO and you know their broader business goal, you might suggest a new PPC campaign. Explain to the client how it will help them achieve that goal. Even if they hand that to a different provider, you just demonstrated real value.
But, don't think this means you have to present a spreadsheet. Show how the idea will help move the client towards their goal in a meaningful way supported by numbers. You don't have to provide dollars-and-cents guarantees - just 'If this works even a little, we'll add $X to our bottom line, so we should do it.'
There's one idea: Be a real strategic partner. Know your client's business and present tactics that connect to strategy and dollars. Even if the client executes on the idea themselves, or doesn't execute at all, it's good for your work together. If they don't remember, no harm done. If they do remember, you've just cemented the relationship - they're more likely to come to you for help and recognize your real value..
It's not that our recommendations go beyond tactics. This approach broadens tactical recommendations beyond your own 'silo.' For example: We work with one client on 'content strategy.' We noticed some technical SEO issues and presented those. We got hired to do SEO and, more important, are still working with that client years later.
A client hired us for an analytics audit. During the audit, we found big problems with their PPC and SEO campaigns: The client's business goals focused on ROI, but their PPC campaigns barely broke even, and major technical issues killed their SEO opportunities. We recommended tactics to them without a sales pitch. We helped with an SEO replatforming and five years later, we still handle their PPC.
Establishing a successful social media strategy involves more than just posting the right types of updates about a new product or a service, sharing a piece of relevant information, or accumulating followers. Essentially, it all boils down to human connections, the one thing that most marketers overlook when they plan and execute social media strategies.
If you want to achieve an effective social media strategy with your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or LinkedIn accounts, make sure that you are able to engage and interact with your target audience. Operative word: target audience. In social media marketing, it is not about the quantity, but the quality. You want your followers to be comprised of people who are actually interested in you, your brand, your product or service, or your business.
Being liked or followed by your target niche allows your message to get across and deliver positive results for your business because your online community is open to receiving it. When you are able to effectively connect to your audience, it becomes so much easier to persuade them to subscribe to your email newsletter, buy your products and services, and become raving fans of your brand and company.
Before you begin developing your social media base, choose measurable objectives that are aligned with your business objectives. Here are some examples:
The only way you can move your audience to actually make a purchase or book your services is by being a familiar and trusted name.
Position yourself as an expert in your industry and share insights to build your brand, generate leads, and eventually drive sales.
Build an accurate database of your social media followers so you are able to reach out to them in future marketing campaigns or you can use the functionality within the social media platforms, such as 'Lists' in Twitter to prioritise your contacts or 'Tags' in LinkedIn.
Nurture your social media connections to grow into a business relationship by addressing their specific needs and motivations, providing them with solutions to their concerns, or giving them a better alternative to something they already have. Think about where they are in the sales funnel and provide relevant content which meets their psychological needs.
Market to existing customers and keep them coming back for more with exclusive membership rates and loyalty rewards programs that will motivate them to remain devoted to your brand.
Keep loyal customers happy, as they are your best brand ambassadors, and consider different techniques including loyalty programs, offers, promotions, rewards and opportunities to provide reviews, depending on your business.
Social media is a marketing communications tool and, as such, must be aligned with who you are as a business entity. Decide on how you want to be known for on social media and make sure that all your posts and comments are aligned with your brand image.
Before you seek followers and influencers, take the time to get to know your neighbours, competitors, customers and influencers to build connections across each social media platform. Find your friends and colleagues, and connect with these people whom you already know and like. Search for other people who share the same interests and join these groups. There are tools you can use to extend your reach.
Develop your social media community by reaching out to your target audience's online influencers. Most influencers get tons of requests, so make sure you make a good first impression by checking their blogs and social media communications to find out what they want. Also, get a social media buddy whom you can get along with and work together on your social media efforts.
While it's great to have thousands of followers and likes, these are not relevant unless they lead to revenue. Social media analytics and data will allow you to identify what is working and what isn't in your social media campaigns. Pay close attention to the analytics and collect a sufficient amount data to base your future decisions on. You will need at least one month's worth of data to ensure that you are making an informed decision.
As a marketer or business owner who uses social media to reach their target niche and more effectively achieve results, always keep in mind that your social media community is comprised of real people who need to have their personal goals met first, before they can take actions that will help your business achieve yours. Once you've realized that managing your social community goes beyond the numbers and start focusing on strengthening human connections, you will be able to notice these relationships evolve from followers to customers.
We love tools for managing digital marketing as I think many working in marketing today do... When I'm talking at conferences I often see most pens to paper when I'm recommending the many freemium tools to gain insight to improve results from marketing.
Sharing advice on selecting and using these tools to get better results from digital marketing was one of the drivers behind setting up Smart Insights and we'll soon be launching a marketplace to feature these tools - get in touch if you'd like to be featured in our new directory.
However, the range of tools to gain insight is daunting and this has been highlighted again by the new Gartner Digital Marketing Transit Map - newly updated for Spring 2015.
It's a great complement for Scott Brinker's Digital Marketing Landscape map which you may know - I personally prefer since it has clearer groupings of technology categories and specific tools shown by popularity.
The overall layout of the transit map is structured as follows:
As Gartner rightly says:
“The rise of digital marketing is producing a fragmented and confusing landscape of terminology, providers and technologies. Gartner’s digital marketing transit map presents a comprehensive landscape of marketing technologies that will enable organizations to see every kind of service and technology that is available and how they relate to each other”.
Maps like this can help in reviewing tools available against what you currently have in place as part of reviewing your use of insight, so I hope some may find this useful - let us know what you think? If so, you may also enjoy Scott Brinker’s Marketing Technology Landscape map. I've kept this map for reference - here's the new Digital Marketing Landscape map from Scott for 2015 - checkout the difference.
Finally, if your eyeballs can take it, you may want to review the Marketing Technology Lumascape:
Now, who's going to be the first company to cover insights from all of these areas?
Every wondered how different brands share Twitter followers... or not? Simply Measured have analysed over 100,000 new followers against the top 10 most 'followed brands'.
As you might expect, there is little overlap between unrelated brands such as Disney and Nike. For related brands, there is more similarity. Burberry Twitter followers also tend to be Louise Vuitton fans which you would expect considering their demographics and affluence, though it's interesting that they like Disney.
Looking at Starbucks, they share 16% of their followers with H&M. This is aligned to their core demographics who are aged 18-24 year olds and account for 40% of sales, mirroring H&M's segment which account for 30% of their visitor traffic. So Starbucks now know they share 16% of followers with H&M, their fans are fashion conscious adults and even more from the table below. This can help them with partnerships, content sharing and promotions.
This is interesting insight which shows the value of profiling followers through selecting a sample of followers to understand different personas. It can also support content marketing planning by discovering more about their online conversations and personal interests as 'brand followers'.
Simply Measured's research also shows:
Earlier this year, Simply Measured also shared how leading brands are succeeding with Twitter engagement, so you can learn more about their strategies or download their guide to profiling your own social media audience.
In ecommerce, as in life, there are those who are unsuccessful, those who are successful, and there are those that are exceptionally successful. Given the choice, which one of these three groups would you choose to emulate with your own ecommerce business?
There are of course many factors that come into play when determining whether your business becomes the next big thing, or last year’s forgotten disaster – product quality, customer service and price points to name just a few. But how well you handle the product copywriting on your website is one thing that can have a massive impact on how successful your business is.
To help ensure that your product descriptions are successful in turning web users into customers, you could do far worse than attempt to emulate the techniques and methods of those online businesses that are already hugely successful. So who are the biggest names in ecommerce right now?
Each quarter, IMRG and comScore produce a list of the top 50 online retailers, known as the IMRG Top 50 Retailer Ranking. This is determined based on the number of visitors to each site via desktops and laptops. According to the most recent February 2015 edition of the rankings, the top five are as follows:
The top four at least will come as little surprise to many people, and it would be easy to chalk their popularity up to how well-known their brands are, and the impressive size of their marketing budgets. But if you look closely at their websites you’ll find that their product descriptions share a number of things in common which ensure that people keep coming back again and again.
Use our wireframes and examples to test and create more persuasive Ecommerce designs to boost retail sales.
Download our Ecommerce Design Bible.
What the product is and how much it costs are the first two things that most customers will want to know about a product.
Amazon, Argos and Tescos have their price information and a highly descriptive product title not just on the product page itself but also on their product selection pages. They know that price is an important factor in any decision to purchase a product. Where appropriate, they will also include brief details of any savings, in order to entice shoppers on the lookout for a bargain. By doing these things, they can maximise the number of click-throughs their products receive, as well as boosting the overall usability of their websites.
AVG meanwhile has the cost of its anti-virus and internet security software emblazoned across its ‘buy now’ buttons, thus removing any steps between the customer finding out the price and making the decision to buy.
Apple on the other hand places its prices a little deeper within its website, but this is in order to entice its visitors with the many features of its products before showing them a list of different prices based on the level of functionality desired (Wi-Fi or cellular data, storage capacity etc).
Tip - Always make the product and the exact nature of the product immediately clear.
Your customers, for the most part, don’t care about the specific features of your products. They care about what your product will do for them. So Amazon’s product description of Jimmy Choo perfume talks about the, 'aura of power and beauty,' and, 'stunning aura of sparkling femininity' that awaits those who buy it.
Argos’ product description of a recliner sofa meanwhile talks about, 'comfortable seating with foam-filled seat cushions and fibre-filled back cushions for superb relaxation,' and Apple talks about the “unprecedented level of security” that its iPad Mini 3’s fingerprint password will give you.
Tip - Don’t make your customers connect the dots. Tell them exactly how they will benefit from the key features of your product.
Often, people don’t want to read about a product until they’ve at least heard a few key things about it. Professional product copywriters know that using bullet points is one of the fastest ways to get necessary information across. These bullet points should illuminate key information such as available sizes, colours and specifications as applicable. Tesco’s description of a pair of men’s shorts for example has bullet points which tell the would-be purchaser that they are 'machine washable' and 'sit above the knee', while Argos’ product description for a sports watch features bullet points such as, 'water resistant to 50m,' 'stopwatch,' and, 'backlight'.
Tip - Whatever you think the shopper needs to know, put it in a short bullet point.
If you look at product descriptions from any of the top five ecommerce websites, you’ll probably notice that sometimes their product copywriters use quite creative and imaginative language to describe what’s on offer. Other times though, they tend to stick to the facts in a more straightforward tone. This is usually in recognition of the type of product being discussed, and the likely audience for the description.
If you were talking about a fragrance for example, you might mention, 'delicately ethereal motes of lavender blossoms', while if you’re writing a product description for a camera it will work much better if you say something more down to earth and functional like, 'It has an extremely long zoom, so you can capture far away subjects in great detail.'
Tip - Adapt the style of your product descriptions according to the type of product and its potential buyers.
By studying the product descriptions of those websites that are at the top of their game, you can hopefully begin to emulate their success by applying what works for them to your own website.
Thanks to Chris for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Chris Glithero is a UK copywriter at Big Star Copywriting, a Devon-based copywriting agency who create content for top brands around the world. He frequently blogs about content marketing, copywriting, search engine optimisation and other matters relating to the ever-expanding world of online marketing. You can follow Big Star Copwriting on Twitter or Facebook.
If you’re a pro marketer, you must already know that the best advertisements are the shortest (usually 30 seconds long). For some reason, (and let’s not blame everything on technology yet) as time goes on and new generations are born, the attention spans seem to be reducing. So, if your customer loves smart phones, uses Netflix, and owns several different portable devices, his attention span may be shorter than you think.
Like any professional marketer, we could use these odd transformations in time to our advantage. How? Think: applications!
You’d want to market where the crowds are, and clearly that’s not the television anymore. Recently, many companies have been using Twitter’s video uploading application Vine to produce and share creative 6-second videos of their products. That’s right. You get only six seconds to make an impact. Used well, it could be the best shortest ad you’ve ever come up with – and it didn’t even take a full 30 seconds like they said it would!
In addition to Vine, there is Periscope as well which came out earlier on this year though in this post, I will be focusing on Vine.
Don’t just use the application for the heck of using it. Without proper planning and a sound idea in mind, you won’t come up with a compelling ad concept. It will just play out like any dud random video you can find on your phone. Avoid making duds! And to do that, you need to come up with sound concept before you start rolling the camera.
Here’s a great Vine micro-planning tool that you can watch to help you develop a clear purpose before you begin.
Sneak peeks are great ways to get your customers hooked. Again, save the best part for later. That’s the trick! This also works great with product launches or something “new” they haven’t seen yet.
RheinZhetung, a German newspaper company demonstrates the amount of planning, work, and effort put into a newspaper using Vine. It's received good engagement, shown by over 80,000 loops.
Remember, you have only six-seconds. You can’t use them to demonstrate a complete new product in detail, but you might be able to demonstrate a new feature. This would work great with tech products.
eBay illustrates the new 'now' service and features a short 6-second video.
Also check out Burberry’s new vibrant glasses Vine video.
Burberry have been running strong video promotions across a range of campaigns, including London Fashion Week, gaining over 3,000 'Likes'. This high fashion brand also partners with well-known companies including Google, to send personalised messages. According to their Chief Creative Executive Christopher Bailey 'the experience is designed to give technology a bit of heart and soul.'
You can ask your customers to upload their own short clips of when and how they used your product. Not only will this engage your potential customers, but also let them know what experienced customer’s think about your company and products.
You can present a visual video of how you developed a customized product. This could precede a testimonial or comment about the customer’s satisfaction with the product or maybe his own version of a short clip (like the fore-mentioned idea).
Another great way to promote your company is by allowing your audience to steal a quick glimpse of your company, backstage. You can show your customers the team or the office and what they do during their time. You could also show a short clip of an ongoing event at the workplace that they can attend or somehow relate to. Check out VW Sharkweek's video promotion on Vine.
Many manufacturing firms show short clips of their processes to let their customers know how it’s all done back at the factory. You won’t have enough time to show everything, but maybe the coolest processing steps in quick short video clips (like a summary) will do just fine!
Thanks to Ashley Sanford for sharing her advice and opinions in this post. Ashley works at Peak Dissertation supervising a panel of professional dissertation writers. She’s also a passionate blogger with a core interest in leadership program and consultation. You can follow her on Twitter.
As consumers are more on the move, shopping and researching using their mobile devices, getting their attention with SMS is a good option many marketers may be underusing. Yet...
Engagement rates for SMS/Text are 6-8x higher than emails and 90% of SMS texts are read within 3 minutes of receipt.
This infographic from West Interactive shows however that even though it's a good medium, there are dangers lurking since mobile users are highly aware of unsolicited texts and opt-out rates can be high. It recommends to ' Co-ordinate your messages across your channels, be aware of country specific legislation and test load times for a good UX.'
It can be difficult to know where to start when working on testing your marketing emails to boost the results of your sequences or campaigns. Which elements should you change? CTA, subject line, colour of your button, the list goes on.
In their latest infographic, our friends at EmailMonks have designed a handy checklist to prompt testing ideas, by revealing which elements to test. Plus they share some examples and best practices from Samantha Iodice of the Email M@ven blog. The text is a little on the small side for us, so if you click we have an enlarged version for you.
Brands are increasingly employing video marketing to communicate their messages, engage online audiences and use content to support the sales and marketing teams. especially n B2B. According to the Demand Gen report, the use of video content in B2B marketing increased from 8% of companies employing it in 2013 to 58% in 2014.
Website Inc reports that 92% of B2B customers watch online video and 43% of B2B customers watch online video when researching products and services for their business. There is little doubt that video is both here to stay and will require your focus.
There are many styles of video from case study to product profile, feature to interview style films. What they have in common for a business is that they are professional, clear, informative and engaging for the viewer and potential buyer.
As part of the commissioning and production process, on-screen graphics should be agreed and added to reinforce the marketing message. And graphics are ideally suited to B2B brands as they help explain complex technologies and services.
For a marketing team, commissioning films should be creative and fun. But there are many pitfalls and making the wrong decision can cost you money. If you're about to commission a video series, then take a look at this film. It's designed to explain some of the technical terms and to help you decide what kind of graphics and/or animation best suit your company.
Any production company worth its salt will employ editors who have a working knowledge of Adobe’s After Effects or Apple’s Motion. These software packages should satisfy nearly all of your graphic needs. 3D or CGI graphics can also be commissioned but before you do, decide whether they are really necessary and worth the extra cost. The rule of thumb is: the more complicated the graphics, the more they will cost you. Complex CGI films can cost upwards of £50k, however most production companies can produce films featuring graphics effects similar to 3D for a lot less.
Give your production company your brand guidelines. With simple guidelines, simple graphics can be created so that the video will sit seamlessly into your website using the same colours and fonts. This Hiscox film is a good example of where the company's font and colour palette has been utilised to create a basic animated graphic 'look and feel' that can be added to live action content.
Graphics should not get in the way of the message; they should complement your content. Remember that it’s not the 1970s and your corporate film is not Top of the Pops. We think this HP info-graphic gets the balance about right between being highly creative and informative.
Do remember that it’s just as likely that your film will be watched on a smart phone as a widescreen computer monitor. So the font should be a decent size and the information should appear on the screen for a reasonable amount of time. Before you sign-off on an edit, watch your carefully crafted video on a range of different devices. If you can’t read the graphics on a phone then your potential customer won’t be able to either. So ask your friendly production company for a re-edit, it won’t take them long and shouldn’t cost you any more money.
Thanks to ThePeloton.tv for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. ThePeloton.tv is a video production company based in London that specialises in creating online content for B2B brands that range from SMEs to major blue-chip companies. From location filming to scripting through to the production of animated graphics and more complex infographics. ThePeloton.tv is a one-stop shop for all B2B video production needs. You can follow them on Twitter @PelotonTV
Importance:
Recommended link: Google's announcement of new Twitter Integration
So, they've made up! You may remember how Google used to partner with Twitter and take their firehose to display tweets in near real-time - I remember it was sub ten seconds. Then they fell out and this feature disappeared back in July 2011. Well a new form of the integration is back as has been previewed over the last few months. I've been taking a look to see how significant - it looks like a great deal for Twitter to me and an acknowledgment by Google that Twitter, not Google+ is THE source for real-time updates as it had hoped.
1. The new 'Popular on Twitter' feature is available on mobile only to start with. This feature was launched on the 19th May 2015, but you won't see this on the desktop just yet, although this is planned according to Google.
2. Twitter results are prominent for some search results, displaying in a 'Popular in Twitter' carousel 'OneBox'. This gives a link through to the Twitter Profile and recent tweets:
In some cases, as here for a celeb, the carousel appears right at the top of the listing. I'm surprised about this since I'm not sure this is what users will want, but it does vary by type of search and Google's OneBox featuring different types of content such as images automagically changes position depending on how popular it is.
3. It's typically displaying for 'trending topics' only not for product or brand information. As would be expected, it only displays for when something is being shared actively on Twitter. This means the 'Popular on Twitter' often displays below the 'News' box when that is triggered. Adding a hashtag also makes the carousel more likely to appear.
So it looks like it's should encourage more 'Real-Time marketing' where brands look to be involved in broader conversations.
Google's intro post suggests this too:
'It’s a great way to get real-time info when something is happening. And it’s another way for organizations and people on Twitter to reach a global audience at the most relevant moments'.
Brands may appear if Twitter is added to the search string:
4. It's English only currently but it is being rolled-out. Google say:
'To start, we’re launching this on Google.com in English in the Google app (on Android and iOS) and on mobile browsers, rolling out gradually. We’re working on bringing it to more languages and to desktop, so stay tuned'.
Although this implies you may be able to see it from elsewhere if you access Google.com this isn't the case, so we can't see it in the UK on mobile.
If you're involved in using SEO to drive traffic, you’ll no doubt know the hype of the build up to Google’s mobile friendly algorithm update since it was initially announced in the autumn of 2014 and finally rolled out a month ago today on April 21st, 2015. Many predicted major changes as a result of the update, with Google’s Zineb Ait Bahajji saying at SMX Munich that the upcoming mobile-friendly algorithm update would 'impact more sites than their Panda or Penguin algorithms'. Even the mainstream media picked up on it, dubbing it 'Mobilegeddon'...
So one month on what has the impact been? Has it impact been like that of a zombie apocalypse, or is it more a case of Business as Usual for most? In this post I'll look at insights from different studies which show the impact of effected websites. I'll also look at how you can review the impact using Google Analytics.
It’s fair to say that the impact of the mobile update has been underwhelming for many.. Google had stated that the update would affect more queries than Panda and Penguin, and although no official numbers have been disclosed, far more volatility in the search results has been observed on previous algorithm updates.
The initial consensus from the WebmasterWorld thread since the April 2015 update seems to back this up, with typical comments including:
'No change on one of the sites I monitor, though we’ve already been mobile-friendly for some time, and mobile has completely surpassed desktop+tablet organic traffic combined within the last year.'
'[UK] If it’s rolled out – then it looks like a very small ranking factor indeed.
I have […] sites that are mobile friendly and sites that aren’t – and I can’t detect any traffic changes whatsoever on a Google + Mobile segment.'
'The joke is nothing has changed.
My sites have seen zero change. I have responsive sites and old school html sites using tables and ZERO change for any of them.
Was expecting a boost for the responsive sites and getting dinged for non-mobile friendly sites.
After one week nothing has happened.'
Surveys of a defined set of keyword rankings across websites are useful for seeing the overall impact and Searchmetrics’ 'winners and losers’ report offers a useful review of the impact of these changes across a diverse keyword set:
Looking at the losers in more detail show some large declines in visibility, but remember that these aren't visits, they are falls in an index of the rank of selected keywords. Searchmetrics advises...
It's important is to take the “Ratio Mobile vs Desktop” into account. It shows the difference between the performance in Desktop rankings and Mobile rankings. The lower the ratio, the worse is this domain ranking in Mobile compared to Desktop. These domains are the losers of the Mobilegeddon update.
Analysis of the first week listed Next.co.uk as the website as the biggest loss in UK. Analysing it reveals how big an impact the update may have had on SEO performance, with Next.co.uk losing visibility on key generic keywords including:
Pages that were not mobile-friendly dropped on average five positions, which is enough of a decrease to significantly impact CTR and therefore share-of-voice.
Other losers included sites such as non-mobile-friendly Songlyrics:
Although there were some positive results, including GQ:
It’s good that Google has given plenty of warning and education on this update. On April 21st they issued this clarification in a blog post that downplays the importance of the mobile-friendly ranking factor:
'While the mobile-friendly change is important, we still use a variety of signals to rank search results. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal — so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query'.
This information would have been useful before and might have prevented the ‘mobilegeddon’ hype, although it does explain why the impact has been less than expected.
Google suggested that the lack of impact may have also been due to a significant number of websites migrating to mobile-friendly websites following their announcement of the mobile update. However, it could be perceived that it’s in Google’s interests to make the internet as mobile-friendly as possible, meaning they purposely hyped the impact to incentivise websites into migrating to mobile-friendly platforms.
There are also suggestions that the weighting of the mobile ranking factor may be increased through time, so the reasons for moving to a mobile responsive or adaptive design are as strong as ever.
You will probably know this already! But if you're asked the question and need a quantitative answer, Dave Chaffey has created a handy step-by-step guide for checking the impact of ‘Mobilegeddon’.
Within Google Analytics you can check the impact by isolating mobile traffic through the creation of a Custom Segment (formerly Advanced segments) by choosing ‘+Add Segment’ from the bar at the top:
It’s likely that Google will roll out improved iterations of the mobile-friendly algorithm over time. There are two key ways in which Google could make improvements:
Google can make improvements to how it detects whether there is a mobile-friendly webpage or not. Currently it is possible to trick Google into thinking you have a mobile-friendly website and get the positional improvements even if you don’t. If you simply redirect a user to a mobile friendly page and then navigate them back to the desktop page, you will be rewarded as being classified as being mobile friendly.
There isn’t much consideration given to how good or bad the user experience is on a mobile device. Over time, we would expect Google to incorporate more user signals into qualifying how good the mobile experience is look more at behaviour metrics and search sequence, so focus must now turn from just having a mobile site, to making it as good as possible.
So that's the story of Mobilegeddon, I hope it had a happy ending for you (so far)!
Importance:
Recommended link: Facebook Help: Enhanced Calls-to-Action for your Adverts
Another day, another update from Facebook.
Today it's a relatively minor ad change.
But an opportunity to remind you about the similar, but more significant change relevant to all page owners, i.e. the ability to add organic call to action button options from your home page which was introduced earlier in 2015.
For example, here is the Smart Insights Facebook page with a 'Sign-up' Call-to-action (CTA) selected.
To learn more about how to implement these company page CTAs, see this Facebook help advice.
Now brands are now given the ability to promote the CTA with an ad. The benefit of this is that you can more prominently drive business outcomes rather than page likes.
Open up Facebook and you'll likely see this:
Click on your CTA and you'll get the option to Promote:
Be aware that if your normal cover image contains more than 20% text you'll need to upload something within the Ad Policy limits.
It's also worth re-writing the copy that will auto surface.
Here's what I've done on the Musicademy Page:
I've uploaded a decent sized thumbnail from the video that the CTA links to (it's always good practice to make the thumbnail image representative of wherever the click leads). I've also crafted a headline and tweaked the default targeting:
You get to see a preview of how it looks on mobile and desktop newsfeed. Click "Promote" and you'll then get a Review notice. Mine took considerably longer than the estimated 15 minutes.
Once you've got your ad posted you can then further refine your targeting by going into the Ads Manager or Power Editor. For instance, you might want to target a custom audience or exclude a certain audience.
Who knows? I've not seen great traction from the Call to Action feature to data (a handful of video views each week) so this may well give a little more oompf to the Page. At the very least it's a novelty factor for now and at the most it's another way of surfacing a video ad (or whatever else your CTA is trying to get people to do).
Head over to The Digiterati website for information on their upcoming Advanced Facebook and social media webinars.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) can be a very complex creature – particularly when it comes to optimising ecommerce sites and campaigns. During this process we need to put our subjective opinions aside, create some robust hypothesis’ based upon data and insights and try to start optimising for the biggest wins first – not always an easy task.
So in the run up to the eagerly awaited online eCommerce Summit we asked three of our expert speakers from the summit the following question:
“So many channels, so many aspects of a campaign to test. What’s your key piece of advice that you would provide to increase conversions for an ecommerce site?”
Dave Holland, European Regional Director of Liveclicker and expert presenter for one of our eCommerce Summit webinars “Cutting through the clutter in the inbox – Exploring the Benefits of Real-Time Email”, gives us his thoughts:
“Marketers have a new opportunity to drive site conversions through contextually relevant off-site messages - email, in particular. Every marketer knows that personalized email messages convert better than 'batch and blast' messages. Unfortunately, most e-commerce businesses lack access to the rich store of data that's required to deliver personalization at scale.
To solve for this, marketers should seek to capitalize on each recipient's real-time personal context: geolocation, time, device, weather, etc. All of this can be done at the moment a recipient opens his email, thereby enabling 1:1 personalization to everyone in the database.”
Join Dave and hear more about real-time emails in his webinar “Cutting through the clutter in the inbox – Exploring the Benefits of Real-Time Email”
Justine Jordan, Marketing Director of Litmus and expert presenter for one of our eCommerce Summit webinars “Designed for Success: Optimizing the Email Experience”, provides us with her advice on the matter:
"While many marketers utilize A/B testing with email, the focus is often on the subject line. To increase ecommerce conversions, incorporate new and varied A/B tests into your email marketing. One of my favorite things to test is preview text—the little bit of copy that follows the subject line in many email programs. Instead of the all-too-common "click here to see images in this email" (or even worse, "having trouble?") copy that is often standard in this space, highlight a promotion, free shipping offer, or other content that will encourage the subscriber to open.
Your call to action (CTA) is arguably the most important part of any ecommerce email and should also be the subject of A/B testing. The possibilities are endless—try testing different language ('shop now' vs. 'buy now' is a personal favorite), adding an arrow, or changing the color. Bulletproof buttons used for CTAs will also display even when images are turned off, which can help increase conversions in otherwise image-heavy emails."
Join Justine and hear some more great advice on optimizing emails in her webinar: “Designed for Success: Optimizing the Email Experience”
Oli Gardner, Co-Founder of Unbounce and expert presenter for one of our eCommerce Summit webinars “Create Campaigns that Convert Using Conversions-Centred Design” provides us with his wisdom on this subject:
“One of the most under-utilized aspects of e-commerce optimization is to create specific experience for each of your most competitive features/benefits and business advantages.
If you have same day delivery, next day delivery, locally sourced ingredients etc. you should be running paid search campaigns to capture those searches, and drive them to landing pages that confirm that your business has this feature before you send them to your site and further down the funnel.
Without this you risk your website not communicating these things in a timely enough manner – especially if you send campaign traffic to your homepage. If you can own these types of search queries you will have a large competitive advantage.”
Join Oli and hear more about why your homepage sucks for campaign traffic in his webinar “Create Campaigns that Convert Using Conversions-Centred Design”.
Lot's of great ideas and there's plenty more to come! Join us for our online eCommerce Summit which features Dr Dave Chaffey, Dela Quist of Alchemy Worx, Oli Gardner of Unbounce, Catherine Toole of StickyContent, Rob Moores of Paypal, Justine Jordan and Chad White of Litmus, Olly Beckett of Expedia and more!
Register now for this free summit to ensure your place!
As a marketing leader you know that each customer experiences numerous touch points with your company throughout their lifecycle. With Lifecycle marketing it’s the job of marketing to ensure that each interaction has a positive impact and moves the customer on to the next stage. But how can you measure the success of your combined efforts and their impact on your customer’s lifecycle? It's time to think about Customer Activation...
Customer Activation means motivating customers to move to the next stage of their lifecycle faster than they would on their own.
You need to think about your customers' lifecycle from potential customer to eventual advocacy. Cultivating relationships with your customers throughout their lifecycle is key to extracting maximum value from them.
Unfortunately many marketers fail in activation through not delivering effective, relevant emails. The problem is shown by the 98% of consumers surveyed in a recent Janrain study on solving the engagement gap, who said the information they receive from marketers is off target. And 94% of survey respondents reported taking one or more of the following actions after consistently being mis-targeted:
Start by mapping out these stages based on the customer behaviours you note as customers move through the lifecycle. Pay attention to the channels your customers turn to and the types of information they want at each stage.
If you’re like most marketers, you grasp the importance of moving away from a channel-or product-focused perspective to a customer-centric model. We understand that it can be daunting to think about making that shift.
To help create a plan to activate your customers we have produced a customer activation work sheet which includes a template showing the questions to answer before producing your customer activation plan. The questions we’ve outlined in this worksheet provide you with a solid framework to start aligning your efforts with the customer lifecycle
You know the way it is with using Google Analytics... nearly all businesses have it installed, but far fewer have customised it correctly for their business AND have a structured approach for using it to improve their online marketing. I think many business owners and marketers know that because of this and the lack of skills to interpret the data, the obvious potential of using Google Analytics to review and improve online marketing is missed by many organisations. The reason for this missed opportunity is not a technology problem. As Avinash Kaushik has pointed out, in his 10/90 rule of managing analytics, that's because this is largely a People issue, i.e. how to provide People with the right processes, tools and KPIs to drive performance.
Those most aware of the challenge and the solution are often Analytics consultants who have worked in multiple businesses to assist them in this process. So, I was pleased to see new in-depth advice available in Successful Analytics: Gain Business Insights by Managing Google Analytics, the latest book by Brian Clifton. You may know Brian as the author of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics which he wrote after his time as the first Head of Web Analytics at Google EMEA, drawing on the experiences of many analytics consulting projects.
After reading his new Successful Analytics book, I was keen to invite Brian talk to our Smart Insights members and Brian has agreed to discuss these in our next webinar when he will be explaining 5 of the most common mistakes of managing Google Analytics and how to solve them.
I also thought it would be useful to give my take on some of the best advice for managing analytics Brian that gives in his book. The main takeaways I took from the book were:
Returning to my first point in this article, customisation of Google Analytics is often missed, so businesses don't have the right Goals or Events setup in Google Analytics so that they can see the value generated by different types of website visitors and the content they browse. For example, it's common in business-to-business marketing to not have a value attributed to Google Analytics goals for outcomes such as leads generated, but without this, you can't work backwards to readily see which content is responsible for prompting leads and which digital media channels are most valuable in achieving this.
To get started with customisation, it's not always essential to get a consultant in since Google has extensive help systems and learning content in the Google Digital Analytics academy. Agencies can help here also. With the right type of Google Analytics audit template like that available in our toolkit, you can review which customisations are needed, and which are missing.
Brian's new book has a detailed advice on this in chapter 3 where he explains his STAG or Site Tracking Assessment and Guidelines process. Related to this there is a 15 checkpoint Scorecard which I think would work really well for agencies too, for example when setting up new sites or taken on new client accounts. Data Quality is also reviewed in depth in Chapter 4 too.
Taking the smart decisions using Google Analytics and more generally in managing digital marketing is, in large part, about asking the right questions. This is an approach we use on Smart Insights with our resources highlighting the key questions to ask yourself, colleagues or agencies. Others will likely ask these questions of you too, so it's best to be prepared. Successful Analytics takes a similar approach with regular tables throughout the book summarising the questions to ask.
Arguably the biggest change to Google Analytics over the last couple of years isn't the interface enhancements or new reports rather it's the launch of Universal Analytics which now includes capabilities to integrate data from other sources. This may be customer data such as demographics or campaign data. Brian explains all the options so you can see which is relevant to you. The importance of campaign tracking and attribution are also covered in these sections.
Brian ends the book with a detailed review of the options for structuring an insights team in different types of business. He starts by looking at the 'Dream Team' of ideal roles and responsibilities in a large organisation and then looks at which of these skills are important in a smaller team. This goes into the details of what job descriptions and the interview process should look for. However the analytics skills needed by non Insights team marketers aren't covered which would be interesting to see also.
You can learn more about Brian's Successful Analytics book here and Expert members can listen to Brian explain how to setup Google Analytics the right way in our next Digital In-Depth webinar for Expert members.
