Haphazard social media adoption is putting your brand at risk

A report earlier this year from Altimeter raises some interesting questions around how well brands are prepared to control social media as it proliferates throughout the organisation. It's an interesting and important question, since unlike any other marketing tactic, social media isn't actually about marketing first and foremost, it's about customers and their adoption of technology is changing the landscape for marketers every day. This change means that multiple stake-holders within an organisation are motivated to leverage social media, whether it's sales, customer service, product development or marketing, leading to a silo'd, poor customer experience.

Varied risks, the same solution: orientate around the consumer

Research and recommendations from Altimeter are heavily based around large, enterprise clients (Adobe, Avaya, Cisco, Hallmark, etc.) with an equally very heavy weighting towards B2B. It's easy to dismiss the insight if that's not your brand. However, the…

A scannable summary of developments marketers using digital marketing need to know

New digital technology

Autographer - a new category of wearable device announced - while Autographer isn’t a platform for marketing, it does highlight a trend towards wearable mobile devices which are increasingly used as part of “life-streaming”. There are possibilities for integrating this into campaigns as map-based mashups have been. Autographer is different from other wearable devices in that it can automatically capture and store thousands of high resolution photos based on motion-sensing intelligence. It has five sensors and GPS capability which show when to take a photo based on subtle changes in light, colour, motion, direction and temperature. All of these parameters are recorded too. Disclosure: I’m mentioning this launch since I’ve been involved in advising on the marketing of the product, but also because it’s a real innovation and…

What is Location Marketing and how to get started for free

In this post I take a look at the opportunity location marketing presents, provide some ideas on the types of campaigns you can send and show just how easy it I to get started.

Why Should you Care?

A recent report by Deloitte showed that mobile influenced 5.1% of in store sales in the US, accounting for $159bn in forecasted sales for the whole of 2012, way over the $12bn forecast for mCommerce. Radio Shack has noted that Foursquare users spend 350% more in store than non-users and a pet food brand in the US saw a 14% uplift in sales after using Foursquare to promote free dog food for every unique check-in. Additionally there are 200 million people sharing location on Facebook, Foursquare is adding 1 million users a month and the recent report by Jiwire shows that 62% of us are willing…

A case study of how an international company manages conversion-rate-optimisation

I think all digital marketers know we should be testing and improving our sites, but the reality is that often we’re focused on day-to-day activities like getting new content live and setting-up campaigns. This means that not enough or more commonly, no time at all, is devoted to structured improvement programmes. One company which certainly does put the time into testing is Belron. They're a multi-channel business with sites operating in thirty-three countries with 19 languages with online revenue of over £400 million. You may know them as Autoglass or Safeglass in the Major markets such as the UK and US. Here Craig Sullivan, Group Ebusiness Manager explains why they invest in structured experiments on their site and some of the benefits they’ve seen. I always enjoy listening to Craig speaking at events because he’s generous in sharing his learnings and tools that they use. This is…

A 3 step guide to DIY Keyword Research

While many larger companies have agencies to work on keyword research for them, many smaller companies don't. To help companies who need to work on their own keyword research, this post shows how to work on actionable keyword research and provides a 3 step quick guide to get your started. There is a wealth of information that you can find on the subject of keyword research but if you're keen to dig deeper on this subject, I would recommend The Beginners Guide to SEO created by SEOMoz who provide an excellent account of the benefits and reasons why keyword research is the foundation to any SEO strategy. Smart Insights have details on more advanced approaches like a gap analysis using analytics and tools to use in their 7 Step Guide to SEO. Let's briefly go back…

The perils of Professional Services websites and ten tips on how to avoid the common mistakes.

As we continue to move towards an online world where more and more visits will come from mobile devices, we still have thousands of professional firms either with a poor online presence or even more alarmingly without ANY website at all. In this post I'll talk about some of the common problems I see daily in professional services websites when benchmarking against competitors. Whether it's sites for accountants, solicitors, law firms or even marketing agencies and consultants, these problems are surprisingly common.

The 10 most common mistakes and how to avoid them

Mistaking Landing Pages with History Pages. Websites should be for the benefit of the visitor, not the client’s ego. Buyers of Professional Services have other concerns first before they care how long you have been in business, how many…

An example of a test using Facebook's new paid offers

Facebook Offers was launched earlier this year, allowing retailers to send deals to their Facebook fans' newsfeeds. Until recently it's been a free service. I wasn't even aware of it until I saw an ad for the new paid-for service in my newsfeed this week and decided to give it a go. Here is what I discovered. The ad is pretty self explanatory. Users claim the offers by clicking on the ad in their News Feeds and redeem the vouchers to get discounts.

How to create a Facebook Offer

Creating the ad is really simple. As well as the option to update your status or post a photo/video, you now have the option to post an Offer or Event (or various other content such as a poll). You can choose to set up a…

Why do social media continue to damage big brands?

In February, Mcdonalds made what I thought was a massive social media gaffe with its #McDStories campaign. As I said at the time, it really should have brought home to CEOs and their CMOs that social media is too important to be entrusted to the inexperienced (both in clients and their agencies). I'm sure you remember this... This wasn't the first ill-advised campaign of the "tell us what you think...finish this sentence" type and won't be the last. Now in September in the UK we have a very similar social campaign mistake. Again, widely reported in the mainstream media where the main damage occurs, at least this one is humorous. Supermarket Waitrose challenged shoppers to "finish the sentence: 'I shop at Waitrose because …' #WaitroseReasons". Here are some typical responses, our favourites: "I shop at Waitrose because it…

The Who, Why and Where of using QR or action codes for marketing

We've had a lot of interest in our previous posts on using QR codes for marketing which shows their potential, but I've had a nagging doubt in my mind about the response rates - no one seems to be sharing success stories. Either it's working fantastically well for QR code vendors and brands and they're keeping it close to their chests or they're embarrassed. Recent reports by Comscore, help with answering the response rate question and also gives an idea of the level of adoption amongst different demographics together with interesting data on how QR codes are being used, hence the title of this post. This summary reviews consumer pull - adoption rates in the US, UK and Europe, but this is also driven by company push as they use QR codes more in their campaigns - we have…

5 reasons why content is core to B2B digital strategy

The importance today of using digital marketing in organisational or business-to-business (B2B) marketing is highlighted by the latest Buyersphere report from Base One.  Supplier websites, web searches and in most countries emails are now primary information sources for business buyers. Online events and social media are also significant, more so if you drill down and look at their overall influence on purchase. I've shown through my previous posts of examples of how companies use B2B marketing, that many companies have responded well to the opportunity from digital media. Many B2B organisations are already successfully using digital marketing in specialist sectors like financial and professional services, IT and software, manufacturing, engineering and science to name a few. But because they don't have a planned approach, they fail to make the most of…