A checklist of 7 questions for the perfect brief
If you have decided to go to a production company to bring your corporate video to life, it is important that you clearly communicate to them what it is you want. You need them to understand your concept and buy into it so that they become as passionate as you are about making a success of the video.
As background, see these examples of B2B corporate videos and different formats compiled by Rene Power.
Based on my experience of what is sometimes missing, here's a checklist of questions that will help you write a great corporate video brief:
1. What’s the purpose of your video?
You need to communicate the goal of your video to the company. Is it to launch or support a specific campaign? Is it an attempt at solving a…
What actions do email marketers need to take?
The new cookie law is not really only about cookies; the law does not even mention cookies by name. Instead, its focus is improving consumer privacy and consumer awareness of how their information is used online.
15th May 2012 update: Since Tim wrote this post, the DMA have created new email marketing privacy guidance for email marketers with the IAB. Tim says the guidance is essentially the same as his interpretation of the law in this post. The DMA also have a downloadable guide for Email and cookie legislation.
The key change is in clause 6, which is headed Confidentiality of communications, of The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (or its friendly name PECR).
Eight words were removed from sub-clause 1 so it now reads:
"6. —(1) Subject to paragraph (4), a…
Britain's online beauty brands find discounts, coupons and samples drive social media engagement - a quick insight to Mintel's latest social media research report
As we are well aware, British consumers are increasingly incorporating the Internet into their daily lives. The Internet has revolutionised the way that people communicate with one another and interact with brands. Social networking sites have facilitated a far greater reach for word of mouth marketing with 59% of Brits logging into their Facebook accounts and 13% signing into Twitter every day.
How are social media platforms used to inform purchases?
Mintel's latest social media research report (into the beauty and personal care market) reveals that Brits increasingly go online to research beauty products before purchase with sites such as Facebook and Twitter informing purchase decisions on beauty products for 34% of would-be buyers. Almost four in 10 Brits (37% - equating to 15 million consumers) have…
The future of the social consumer
This is an interesting social commerce infographic by ecommerce provider, Gloople.
We're aware of the growth in the social commerce space and there's some interesting data here to hammer home the scale and potential for brands that retail online. It's also broader than you might think...
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Ideas for making Google Adwords ads more effective
I've found when managing Pay Per Click (PPC), that it's a channel, much like SEO, in that it attracts intelligent people to manage accounts and it can quickly become extremely complex. Alternatively, it's easy to experiment in an
No doubt you will have seen this with your own PPC accounts, it quickly gets to a point where someone says, "we will have to restructure the account". It is inevitable in an environment with so much technology, data and ability to easily / quickly test. The motto for effectiveness in messaging though is, "Keep It Simple, Stupid" and I think this applies to PPC ad. The 5 tips below do not get into the intricacies of technology or copywriting, but instead aim to remove the blocks and limitations of technology and give you a process for a more creative approach to text-ads. Technology can come in afterwards.…
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02 May 2012
The UK is 2 years behind with social media!
Having spent two days at the UK Social Media World Forum recently it seems to me that UK industry remains roughly two years behind North America and many countries in the Far East. Companies in South America also seem to be developing at a faster rate.
While the conference was about social media, I felt it had a very narrow focus, a focus on how to use social media for marketing campaigns. This is fine, marketers want to know this! But there are bigger strategy questions to ask. In my view, social media is not as effective for short term tactical campaigns without a wider content and engagement strategy. It works best when integrated across the business as this recent report by McKinsey suggested.
Don't get me wrong, there were many useful…
Every website owner wants to know how visitors behave on their website, but how do you get all that information and how can you improve your pages with it?
Web analytics tools like Google Analytics can give you some good information about previous pages and the most popular links, but to show interactions in detail, additional tools are often useful. It’s these specialist tools that I focus on this review.
For more background on applying heatmaps to improve sites, see these two tutorials:
Using Heatmaps to Optimize your Site (Referral Candy - shows examples Click, Scroll and Mouse movement heatmaps)
Using Clickmaps to Understand your viewers - a nice summary of why and how to use heatmaps
There are various ways to collect more information about the behaviour of visitors on your website.…
Explaining the value and relevance of colleagues to social media
Value: [rating=4]
Recommended link: McKinsey Quarterly - free report - no registration required
The report presents a clear framework, based on expert interviews for four areas needed to manage social media marketing:
Explaining the value of social media is a challenge for many working in marketing today, whether to yourself, colleagues or clients, so we’re alerting you to this report since it may help you clarify the benefits and approaches to managing social media in a business.
The advice has the gravitas of McKinsey who have been contributing thoughtful advice on online marketing strategy approaches since 1995. Well known social media commentator David Edelman is one of the main authors.
The four areas are:
1. Monitor. Repeating the advice often given…
