How to build a marketing automation programme to score leads
How do you know which leads to follow up, when to follow up and what's relevant to communicate based on where leads are in the sales funnel? These are challenges for any business using inbound marketing to generate demand and manage leads. Lead scoring is a vital methodology to ensure your leads are sales-qualified, ready for your sales team to follow up, so they are not left dormant and become missed sales.
The research from Snapapp and RingLead identifies that over 44% of companies have active lead scoring programs yet 32% are not successful with their programs. It goes on to say that companies will automatically fail if they do not address their data cleaning and accuracy, and shares both scoring indicators and how to improve your programs through a scoring hierarchy.
As well as planning your lead scoring program and the appropriate content, it's important to have the right Marketing Automation tools to facilitate this. Check out our Marketing Automation Guide if you are at the research stage of rolling out your lead program.
Download resources – Marketing Automation Best Practices Guide
best practices will help you review your requirements for marketing automation, understand best practices and select the best vendor.
How to manage a PR crisis using social media intelligence
Sometimes, however much you prepare, a crisis is unavoidable. It can at happen at any time and for any number of reasons but whatever happens companies and organisations need to try to manage the crisis when it happens. Of course this has become quite tricky with the incredible volume of posts on social networks making it hard to track every facet of a problem. But with the right social media intelligence software, PR and Communications teams can better manage a potential crisis situation.
Social data is of particular use in two stages of a crisis: detecting the beginnings of a crisis and managing the crisis. This post will explain how social intelligence (monitoring and analysing online data) can help you manage these two stages quickly and effectively.
Detecting a crisis
Understanding the sentiment towards your company, brand and/or client is the first step towards detecting a potential crisis. Spikes in negative and even neutral activity should be treated with caution as they could be the first indicators of an oncoming crisis.
1. How much negativity is there?
These metrics give you an instant idea of whether you are facing an impending crisis.
By looking at the share of sentiment you can see what proportion of mentions of your company or brand are positive, negative or neutral. The two mention gauges (middle) give you the total numbers of results and the total negative results with an indication of how this has changed from the previous period.
By looking at spikes in negative (or even neutral mentions) you can quickly see whether potentially problematic online discussions are on the rise.
By comparing the volume of total mentions to the volume of negative mentions you can instantly get an idea of the scale of the issue you are dealing with.
2. Understanding negativity
Having tracked the timing and the volume of negative mentions, you now need to quickly understand where the issue is originating and what it is about.
The top two tables show you which media channels critical conversations are originating from divided by levels of engagement, potential reach and number of results. The three theme clouds below them show you the main topics linked with your brand, the negative mentions linked with your brand and the negative hashtags.
By knowing which media channels are generating the most conversation you can start to target your crisis communications accordingly. Understanding the topics and hashtags linked to your brand helps you get a deeper knowledge of exactly how the crisis is being discussed which, in turn, gives you an idea of how to shape your messaging.
3. Crisis locations
A world map of mention locations shows you where social conversations are taking place and the volume of discussion in each region.
For global brands in particular, knowing which countries or regions to focus on can help save valuable time when devising a global communications strategy, especially if actions need to be coordinated with regional partners.
Managing an ongoing crisis
Once you have detected a crisis that needs to be dealt with, the next step is managing that crisis and digging deeper into its causes and the way in which it is spreading.
1. Change over time
The top three gauges show you the total level of mentions and engagement as well as the potential reach of these mentions. The ticker shows whether this level has increased or decreased in comparison to the previous period. The line graph below them shows levels of positive and negative mentions over the last seven days.
With this information PR professionals can track the progression of a crisis situation with hard social metrics and see whether the problem is increasing or decreasing.
The engagement and potential reach figures give a sense of how far the crisis has proliferated and how much interest it is generating among the online public.
2. A clearer picture
The top two charts show the reach and engagement of mentions about your company divided by media types (top left) and the sentiment chart (top right) shows the positivity and negativity by media type. The theme clouds below them hone in on just the negative topics and hashtags that are being discussed in relation to your brand.
By understanding the reach, engagement and sentiment by media type, you can quickly see which media channels are having the biggest effect on your company’s social reputation. By cross referencing the sentiment with the engagement level for example, you can hone in on the problem areas and present your message more effectively on those platforms.
3. Who are the Influencers?
The top results (top left) show all the results classed as negative across all media channels whereas the results on the top right show only negative Twitter results. The table below them shows the Twitter accounts that have posted the largest number of negative results sorted by the level of engagement they have generated.
Influencers are a key part of any communications strategy in the social media age and understanding exactly what they are saying about your company is critical. Engagement figures help you to establish exactly who is the most influential, helping you prioritise your communications activities.
The vast amount of data online in the form of posts on social networks, online news article and blogs, has definitely made the process of tracking and understanding a crisis more challenging. However, the fact that all this public data can be tracked and measured means that using social listening insights, can be gleaned that were previously virtually impossible to find.
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Thanks to Richard Sunley for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Richard is a Copywriter and Communications Officer of Talkwalker You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.
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The top skills and attributes of an effective in-house SEO Manager
To be a truly effective digital marketer, it’s important to develop a good range of skills and experience regardless of which digital discipline (SEO, UX, analytics, social media) you practice. For a couple of years now I’ve been using the T-shaped marketer approach as a template for my professional development, something that both Distilled and Rand Fishkin from Moz have explained in detail.
As Rand Fishkin explains: 'T-Shaped basically refers to having a light level of knowledge in a broad array of skills, and deep knowledge/ability in a single one (or a few).'
Essentially, breadth breeds respect and overlapping knowledge yields creativity. There are great benefits for digital marketers who, whilst specialising in a single area or discipline (e.g. SEO), develop a lighter level of knowledge across a broader spectrum of skills (e.g. social media, content marketing, web analytics etc).
Simon Swan discussed the T-shaped marketer approach for Smart Insights in 2013 and outlined the following five reasons to consider life as a T-shaped marketer:
1. Develop organisational integration
2. Know your audience
3. Integrate technical and general marketing skills
4. Expand digital knowledge
5. Think and act like a start-up
What makes a great in-house SEO Manager?
With the T-shaped marketer approach in mind and an appreciation of how SEO has evolved over the last 5-7 years, what skills should the modern SEO Manager possess? The days of creating sites using ‘thin’ content and building cheap links are long gone. Today, genuine relevance through quality content and earned links requires the modern SEO manager to leverage a wide array of skills to ensure they drive rankings and quality organic traffic to the websites they’re responsible for.
Smart Insights provides some very helpful guidance on the roles and responsibilities for various digital marketing jobs. However, for this post I’m going to look more broadly at the skills I believe are essential for the modern SEO Manager include:
1. A strategic perspective
Modern SEO Managers must have the ability to develop a strategic perspective and tie their SEO plans to the goals and objectives of the business. Having a strategic perspective enables you to define an approach and create a long-term vision for how you see SEO adding value to a business over time.
2. A clear understanding of best practice tactics
From strategy, tactics should follow. The modern SEO Manager should have a good appreciation of the most effective SEO tactics at their disposal. With search engines becoming ever more sophisticated, it’s not possible to simply ‘chase the algorithm’.
SEO Infographics
Below are a set of very helpful infographics outlining some of the best tactics for on-page, off-page and technical SEO:
Whilst content marketing is a key tactic and could therefore reside in the sub-section above, I’ve singled out content marketing for specific focus due to the importance it plays in today’s modern SEO landscape.
The modern SEO Manager must have the skills to effectively analyse performance and generate insight. Whilst some companies (usually medium-large) may have analytics or insights teams, the ability to competently conduct analysis of their own will put SEOs at a huge advantage.
There are two areas where I believe a good SEO manager can add value:
1. A clear view of core KPIs and success metrics: An understanding of what core KPIs to use, against which you can measure how you’re performing vs. the strategy and filter insight back into the operational SEO process.
2. What is the competition doing? How do you compare? Effectively benchmark performance vs. competitors, providing you with an understanding of gaps, opportunities and areas for improvement.
5. Brand Management
A great SEO Manager will not look to build content and optimise websites in isolation (see point 1 - ‘a strategic perspective’above). They will need to have an appreciation of the brand and what the company stands for, all of which will help inform the content and SEO roadmap.
Whilst SEO Managers need not be branding experts, I believe they should be confident articulating what a brand is and how it impact the work they do.
Simon Sinek, Author of ‘Start with Why’, uses a great concept called the ‘Golden Circle’ to question why brands exist and therefore what they do and how they do it:
6. People management and team building
Many SEO Managers work alone, sometimes the sole subject matter expert in the company. However, whether within an SME or a large corporation, at some stage many SEO managers will be looking to either manage an existing team or to build one of their own.
People management is difficult skill to master but one that all great SEO managers must possess. As teams become bigger, the manager must have the ability to juggle resources, motivate the team and ensure that the strategy is being executed.
The Harvard Business Review suggests the following key components to people management: Selection, Expectation setting, Motivation and Development.
7. Stakeholder management
Modern SEOs must have the ability to effectively manage the concerns and interests of multiple stakeholders. It’s not possible to simply manage SEO in isolation; instead SEO should be considered from an integrated perspective, i.e. how does it tie in with other areas of the business.
As with people management, stakeholder management is a learned but very important skill, involving a blend of understanding, astute analysis and empathy Some of the key stakeholders I would suggest an SEO Manager must be aware of include:
Senior management
Ecommerce
Brand
PR
Procurement
Agency
Google
Where do the various stakeholders lie on a Power/Interest matrix?
A stakeholder’s position on within the matrix indicates the relative power and interest in your work and the actions you may need to take with them.
Summary for recruiting your SEO Manager
Managing SEO today requires more than being an adept technician and practitioner. The modern SEO Manager must possess a wide array of skills and competencies, enabling them to effectively manage strategy and set a vision whilst simultaneously be aware of, and execute, tactics that cover on-page, off-page and technical elements of SEO.
The modern SEO Manager must also be an astute manager of people and multiple stakeholders, as well as possess an in-depth understanding of the brand.
A ‘T-shaped’ skill provides a sound template for how effective SEO managers can approach their career development. Managers should continue to develop their skills within the discipline of SEO, but also develop broader skills in other technical areas (such as analytics, PPC and web development) and softer skills (people management, communication etc).
Download resource – Digital Marketing Job Descriptions guide
Use this guide to define job specifications and check your own career development.
Learn what metrics can help you truly understand the value of your spend and what technologies really deliver on this most important metric. Small-to-medium businesses are investing in their marketing at jaw-dropping new levels.
BIA/Kelsey predicts that 2015 will be a banner year for local media expenditure on the part of these organisations, with investment exceeding $50 billion.
Digital investments are at the forefront, with 28% of marketers reducing their traditional advertising budget to fund more digital marketing and search marketing capturing the largest share of online spend at 47% according to Business2Community. But with so many dollars on the line, how can a business know what investments are really paying off?
Return on Investment is the gold standard that today’s marketers are seeking. But with each new media channel, there is new complexity in the metrics used to calculate ROI. A couple of examples:
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising:
8 typical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track the effectiveness of campaigns, including:
Impressions– How many times an ad is shown
Quality Score– A search engine’s calculation of ad copy relevance to keyword or query
Clicks– How many times someone clicks on an ad
CPC– Cost per click
CTR– Click through rate
CPA– Cost per acquisition
Conversion Rate
Total Spend
Social media metrics:
Include reach and engagement, in addition to platform specific metrics, including:
Likes
Followers
Shares
Retweets
All of this data can cause a marketer’s head to spin. Many SMBs and their marketers are asking:
In my social media, should I focus more on reach or on how many likes a promoted post has gotten?
Are shares more important?”
Is Click-Through-Rate what I’m worried about, or conversions?
Answering these questions involves making sense of a kaleidoscope of new and evolving metrics. Many online marketing products couple their campaign platforms with dashboards in order to help business owners visualize the results they are trying to comprehend. But what this often becomes is confusing noise that makes a simple ROI calculation more difficult. Without a straight answer as to which marketing investment is paying off, marketers and the companies they work with are less likely to open their wallets to more advertising.
How to rise above the noise
There is one clear metric that, regardless of the media channel, provides a simple way to begin calculating the elusive advertising ROI. This metric can be measured the same way regardless of campaign, whether social media, search marketing, even a simple print ad. Think of this metric above all else: Lead Acquisition Cost (LAC).
Why is LAC so effective at connecting results to efforts? Because it focuses not on a click or a 'like', but an actual prospect engaging with a business. Similar to Cost Per Lead (CPL) or Price Per Lead (PPL), it’s basically a business’s calculation and qualification of the amount paid for each lead, of any form, that a business receives.
It’s calculated by taking the cost of all investments in lead-generating campaigns and dividing that cost by the new leads acquired during a fixed amount of time.
For the purposes of this calculation, you should only count what some marketers call qualified leads. Qualified leads reflect the number of leads that were actually in the market for services or products your company provides. If you’re having a hard time figuring out how to qualify leads coming in, then focus on total leads for now. Once you begin to calculate LAC, your appetite for refining the data will grow along with your understanding of how to do it.
Affordable LAC tracking
It used to be more difficult for a small-to-medium business to track their own LAC, but new tools are available that are making it easier. These tools are tracking lead engagement at a much lower point in the marketing and sales funnel than the typical platform-specific metrics mentioned above. Knowing how many times an ad is clicked is much less helpful in calculating LAC than lower funnel metrics like appointments booked, in-store traffic, and phone calls from first time callers.
Tools such as call tracking analytics use a phone number assigned to a specific keyword, ad or campaign when a customer is calling a business as a result of a specific marketing effort.
Since these numbers can be assigned and inserted into a campaign anywhere, the lack of platform-specific tools that measure lower funnel activity is irrelevant.
There’s also been significant growth in other low-funnel services like in-store beacons and appointment booking software over the past year, as well as dashboard software that connects to these applications. Even old technologies like people-counting devices at retail stores are seeing an uptick.
What do these changes mean for the marketer seeking ROI? It means you can gain LAC data without an expensive, complicated effort.
While data is the key to insight, too much noise in the data renders it useless. By focusing on LAC, you can streamline your analytics to a point that they are truly meaningful. The result will be a solid picture of what marketing investments are paying off, what expenses need to be trimmed, and what efforts might need to be abandoned completely.
Thanks to Mark Sullivan for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Mark is the Director of Analytics at CallRail, and inbound call tracking platform. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.
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How to generate leads from small B2B audiences in a niche market
Dominating a niche B2B market generally reduces competition, reduces price pressure and the ‘me too mentality’ brings a supplier closer to their customers and increases their loyalty. So why do so few companies make a success of niche marketing? What are the challenges associated with lead generation? What is the best combination of marketing tactics to achieve success?
Niche market definition
First let’s define a niche B2B market – the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) defines it as ‘A clearly defined segment of the market. It is about satisfying a specific customer need that is, in general, not covered by any major competitors’. Philip Kotler defines a niche as ‘a portion of the market in which individuals possess homogeneous needs and characteristics and the latter are not covered by the general offer to the market.
To break those definitions down, addressing a niche is about servicing very specific (common) needs across a clearly identified market segment that are not addressed by competition.
To be viable a niche, it must be quantifiable and measurable, accessible and, probably most importantly, both of sufficient size and growing at a fast enough rate to sustain sales growth. There is little point allocating resources to pursuing a niche if it is unlikely to deliver an appropriate return on investment.
Lead generation challenges in a niche market
Low competition and our own set of loyal customers - sounds wonderful in principle but the reality is not quite that simple. Niche marketing throws up a unique set of challenges that are not (in general) addressed by common marketing literature, they include:
Small number of customers / prospects.
Relatively small number of opportunities.
Ensuring the message is heard.
Perhaps the greatest challenge is the relatively small number of potential customers or prospects. In B2C and larger B2B markets, there are potentially many thousands (perhaps millions) of potential customers. Mass marketing, even if it only results in 1-2% response (enquiry) rates, works well. However, that same process is unlikely to work in a niche market with perhaps only 400 potential customers.
With a small number of target customers it follows that there will be a limited number of opportunities emanating from those prospects. Each opportunity is potentially more important in niche markets than in mass markets. Once a customer is secured, long term retention of that customer is vital to success and they must be serviced appropriately, and sales must be on top of every potential purchase that may arise.
In the battle to raise potential customer awareness, ensuring your message is heard is a problem for niche (and other markets) that is often overlooked. You may be in the fortunate position of supplying a full system or solution but for many their product or service is part of an overall whole.
Even with a specific solution and limited competition, it can be a struggle to be heard among the suppliers competing for share of mind on any single customer project. Is yourspecific message likely to be heard and acted upon amongst all the noise?
Don’t forget the marketing basics
Before attacking any niche market it is essential to have the marketing basics in place. Detailed research should lead to an understanding of specifically what your company offers, who needs that product or service and why do they need it? Why is your product or service unique and why is it that the competition is not addressing that need within your niche?
With the above in place it is possible to identify the potential customers for your product or service. Unlike traditional marketing, where many businesses happily survive by addressing only a subset of the available customers, it is important in a niche to identify them all (or at least as many as practical). With the customer list in place, it is important to check and double check that this set of target customers has the potential to deliver enough business to make the niche viable.
It’s all about the numbers or lack of them
With the basics in place, a plan may be constructed to reach the target customers while overcoming the niche market challenges outlined above. You have a target customer base of perhaps 400 customers and an objective to increase awareness within those customers.
The first step has to be to dive deep into each target company you identify
If you take just a quick look at your CRM, in many companies you have only two, maybe three contacts. Perhaps a single engineer and a buyer, but what about all the other potential contacts that may have an influence on purchasing decisions. What about project people, or quality? Are their several project teams and do they have their own engineers? Who are the real influencers in a target organization? The more relevant people in a target customer you can find the more chance of raising awareness within that company and the higher the chances you have of generating a lead for sales to follow through.
What is the best mix of marketing tactics to raise awareness of the product or service and generate leads from the niche market?
Is outbound marketing the best route, or is inbound a better option? To maximise the potential for success in a niche market it is important to both increase the number of contacts (see above) and the touch points and, in general, it is on numbers and touches that outbound marketing fails to deliver.
Let’s assume you have 400 companies on your target list but only two contacts in each company. You decide to try outbound tactics initially. You call 400 companies and with persistent calling you reach 70% (best case) of that the available contacts. Let’s assume your script is to ask the prospect for some sort of immediate decision then I suggest you will be lucky if 10% respond positively.
You may try some traditional advertising in carefully selected media. What’s the response rate likely to be 2%? Perhaps you could try some direct mail, again at what response rate? Maybe 3%. You may try a promotional email and achieve a 20% open rate and 5% of those click through.
Even if you employ all of these tactics and assume the results are cumulative then you have 104 positive responses. What about the other 696, what do you do with them? Are you going to call, email and direct mail again? How is your message going to change? Will pushing out the same message again and again deliver improved results or is it a law of diminishing returns?
When pushing your message out there, you are competing for share of mind on a project with those supplying other products or services to a project that can potentially shout much louder than you. A way needs to be found to bring prospects to you at the point they are ready to consider your product or service.
The answer then is inbound marketing, touching your target contact base on a regular basis with useful and engaging content.
In principle this strategy fits perfectly with the objectives of reaching out to the contact base on a regular basis (without causing resistance) and also with maximising retention of those customers that have been secured. For the record I am a fan of inbound marketing but it does have its problems.
Problems with inbound marketing
The first issue is the substantial time lag from starting the process to any meaningful results.
The resources required to implement the process are significant and it requires an in depth knowledge of where prospects look for information on products and services and an understanding of their information needs. A strong website as an information hub, an E Newsletter campaign, blog posts and other online media designed to deliver on whatever prospects may be searching for will all have a positive impact but on their own are not enough.
What offline media do target contacts utilize, what do they trust, how do you get your message in these publications are all issues that require detailed evaluation but in the end analysis the key issue with inbound is the time involved.
What is actually required for best results is an appropriate mix of outbound and inbound marketing techniques that best matches with the niche market. With inbound as the main marketing process what outbound techniques can be employed without damaging the trust element associated with inbound. An element of outbound marketing buys time for the inbound process to deliver results.
Thanks to Phil Smith for sharing his advice and opinions in this post. Phil has over 20 years experience of B2B technology, manufacturing, marketing and blogs about B2B marketing, strategy and sales and marketing alignment. He provides outsourced marketing services with Striga Consulting and you can connect via Twitter at @Phil_striga or on LinkedIn.
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Unless you are lucky enough to have an external agency, it can be difficult to know where to place your resources and prioritise your efforts to ensure your website is optimised; which statistics to review for engagement, how to check if your visitors can use your navigation and the list goes on. This infographic from Mediavision is a good basic top-level checklist to help you with reviewing your website, though you will need to delve further into each areas. It's not an exhaustive list since there are other ideas to include usability research testing, (eye-tracking) heat mapping tools, and we are sure more can be added to this planning list.
Examples of creating powerful online value propositions
Today’s customers are experiencing an information avalanche with social requests, blog posts, real-time updates, news outbreaks etc fuelled by companies eager for our attention. Using digital channels to interact with their audience but not adapting their strategy of pushing messages out and expecting an instantaneous return on investment by measuring their digital channels as they measured their offline channel.
Brands are clambering on the digital band wagon but using the same techniques they used in a bygone era of broadcasting their message through buying up media space (Radio, TV, ad impressions) but it is no longer working: appealing to the masses means appealing to no one – rather, brands need to spend more time to get to know their audience and know what motivates their audience.
There requires a change in approach and change in tactic, brands need to be asking the question: Am I being useful? – 'If you sell something, you make a customer today. If you help someone, you may create a customer for life'
In his book, Youtility, Author Jay Baer puts forward two alternative ways for companies to adapt their proposition and help re-define what their brands stand for – 'there is an opportunity to be amazing or they can be useful…Amazing is difficult to do and how to measure 'being amazing' is hard to quantify and it’s an assumption held by most brands that they assume their proposition is indeed amazing. What may be regarded as amazing by one may not be by another'.
So as an alternative, Baer argues that more businesses should focus on being useful, defined as:
'Youtility is marketing upside down. Instead of marketing that’s needed by companies, Youtility is marketing that’s wanted by customers – Youtility is massively useful information, provided for free, that creates long-term trust between your company and your customers'.
Marketing through the years
Historically there have been 3 categories of marketing: and all 3 have migrated from the industrial landscape to the digital economy.
1. Top of mind awareness: A sustained level of marketing so when the customer is ready to buy they think of your brand. A perfect recipe for TV advertising for example how Coca-cola built their brand on national advertising campaigns when there were only 3 TV channels therefore being able to capture a national audience. Such a strategy has migrated to digital such as how brands treat their social media channels, flooding users timelines with branded messaging via an array of promoted ads and branded content to each and every user.
2. Frame of mind awareness: a strategy of reaching potential customers when they are in an active shopping or buying mode. For example the rise of inbound marketing can be described as frame of mind awareness where the concept is making your brand to be found for example through search engines.
3. Friend of mine awareness: due to the digital landscape maturing and with it user adoption of technology now a part of everyday people’s lives a 3rd method of marketing has been created which is based on the fact that 'companies are competing against real people for the attention of other real people'.
A number of reasons for this: Technology has begun to marry both our personal and professional lives e.g. Social Media for example @hiltonsuggests who operate a program on Twitter providing helpful advice to their followers on relevant information about their portfolio of hotels across cities, towns and regions.
@HiltonSuggests saw a unique opportunity to interact with anyone who is looking for information based on location. Their social media strategy is offering advice, comments and assistance to anyone posting a tweet and is looking for general advice. saw a unique opportunity to interact with anyone who is looking for information based on location.
Their social media strategy is offering advice, comments and assistance to anyone posting a tweet and is looking for general advice. Their logic is that some day that individual may be seeking a hotel room and will remember how @HiltonSuggests were so helpful.
Campaign Example: Geek Squad
Geek Squad is a subsidiary of US retailer 'Best Buy' and was set up with the sole purpose to provide anyone with technology related questions whether corporate clients or residential customers. Anyone can access Geek Squad support with their (whether a customer or not) through the libraries of content the company has created through video explainers and social media support or 24/7 customer help line.
Geek Squad knows that at some point everyone gets out of their depth and needs help over a product you’ve purchased so why not create a destination site where your questions can be answered for free?
What both Hilton Suggests and Geek Squad realised is rather than charging for such a service, they have created a destination that has built reputable brands in creating helpful information and in turn built trust, and authority, essentially “its marketing that is so useful people would pay for it”
The industrial revolution mindset would be asking at this point.. 'this is crazy, how are they delivering an ROI?!' This is precisely the wrong approach and is exactly why in today’s connected, digital first culture, so many brands are struggling to get their voice heard and struggling to differentiation their proposition.
Brands need to be asking the question, are we providing something truly useful, something helpful to our audience? Ask your customers – what do they want, need, want more of, expect from you?
6 Blueprints to Youtility for a successful strategy
Identify customer needs: In a fragmented digital market it has become necessary for brands to align their proposition to what their customers actually need or want. Analysing trends and insights into your audience should be your building blocks to truly provide direct needs to your users such as insights from analytics package, Google trends for seasonal content opportunities aligned to your proposition as well as the google keyword tool to potential search volumes.
Map customer needs to useful marketing: Columbia Sportswear is a good example of how they underwent qualitative research to understand what their user needs were and developed an App called 'What knot to do in the great outdoors' – realising their audience were outbound, away form the office, liked to walk and take on outdoor activities. Columbia developed an app providing instructions on how to tie knots. Something their audience found useful.
Market your marketing: When you launch an app or begin answering questions via social media in order to create a form of Youtility, you are committing yourself and your brand to create truly helpful information what will add value to the lives of your customers. But many brands assume this is the end goal, it isn’t – you need to ensure you market your marketing.
Insource Youtility: Empower your employees to amplify your messaging and assist to drive helpful content and information to existing customers and new prospects. The role of social media provides companies with a channel to interact with new audiences targeting different demographics based on the social channel of choice. Your employees provide an untapped opportunity for companies to create, maintain and drive helpful information due to the useful knowledge locked in their heads. Youtility provides a reason to unlock this knowledge bank and drive useful content.
Youtility – a process not a project: Creating an environment to champion Youtility is indeed a process with no timeline. It’s not an instruction manual to follow, it requires creative and collaborative ways in working across your organisation to ensure you are providing helpful information. It’s a never-ending process of unearthing opportunities that engage with new audiences where your digital channels should be used to help amplify your Youtility messaging.
Keeping Score: It’s essential organisations that embed a Youtility approach are measuring its effectiveness correctly. Unlike the more traditional digital channels where an ROI can be tracked back and sudden decisions can be taken to either switch off/alter the channel (e.g. PPC, SEO, affiliates), Youtility is a change in cultural mindset by the organisation to embrace more fully with their audience and prospects. As quoted by Baer 'the objective is not just to create Youtility for the sake of it, but to improve your business in the process'.
