First 10

Sun Tzu and the art of digital marketing strategy [Part 2]

Danyl Bosomworth — Tue, 08 May 2012 09:23:07 +0000

Thinking like Sun Tzu to improve your strategic position

This is the second part to last week’s interpretation of how Sun Tzu’s Art of War can be applied to digital marketing - thanks for the comments and shares on the first part! Here I’ll cover three ways in which applying Sun Tzu’s Art of War can help develop your marketing or digital marketing strategy, starting with the 5 elements…

The 5 Elements to defining your strategic position

Sun Tzu defines five key elements to help understand your position that make total sense when applied to marketing too. Your strategic position is never strong or weak… it is only strong or weak in relation to something or someone else.

Mission or the way: This is what unites all of the people in the Army (organisation) and the customer. It helps everybody to share in the same goals and objectives, it allows everyone to ‘get real’, to feel that what has been set out is believable and not full of self-deceit. Is this clear and believed in your dept or organisation, is everyone facing the same way, for the right reasons? More often than not, bigger organisations struggle here, they’re fragmented and it’s much harder to get clarity. Smaller organisations are more easily re-grouped, missions defined. Is this one reason why we often see large organisations losing out to small up-starts?
Climate or the seasons: These are the trends that change your situation from moment to moment, so what’s changing for your organisation? Is the timing and the environment or marketplace providing the opportunities to advance your position? The online marketplace is particularly dynamic and not everyone has a process to exploit this.
Ground or terrain: This is where the contest for such a position takes place and new grounds open up everyday, where your strengths beat that of the competition to serve your market. The ground (market) provides the prize you seek to win. It defines the game and the unique rules. Experts talk about disruptive innovation to create and open up new ground to compete on. Is this on your agenda?
Command or leadership: It’s all about you (and your management team) and the unique quality of character and leadership that are brought to your situation. It inevitably involves brand clarity from a marketing stand-point, particularly in brand ethics and brand values. Leadership is also the space where decision-making takes place, and where there’s creativity and personality.
Methods or management: This describes the tools, tactics, skills and techniques that are to be deployed, mastered and managed. Things that need to be done with other people in order you can win. Strategy is itself a system to understand, comprising of tools, techniques and tactics.

Tzu says that only when you out-score your competitors on each area do you have a genuine strategic position, it’s then time to advance…

Spot and advance your opportunities

With a clear strategic position comes the ability and requirement to focus! Now you can now see the wood for the trees and you’re not trying to do everything. With this in mind, one of the fundamental rules of Sun Tzu’s thinking on strategy is that you cannot create opportunities. Once understood, this realisation helps us stop trying to do what is impossible. You see that your opportunities can only be created by the competitive environment itself, and by learning to see them you also see that those opportunities are all around and constantly changing. We hear the “gap in the market” exclamation a lot, right? Doesn’t mean it’s relevant though. Whilst having better information than others is always beneficial, better information is rarely required to make better decisions than the competition. All we need is better knowledge of what the key information is, tools to access it and a clearer focus on using it in relation to our goals, more than other people have.

Spot the openings - The “openings” in the environment that allow you to advance your position in the direction of your mission. These openings are usually small, but by taking advantage of the small openings, you eventually position yourself for the big advances you want. Sun Tzu’s system of opportunity development provides a set of technical tools that allow you to identify openings that you would normally overlook.
Advancement - Listen – Aim – Move – Claim. Opportunities develop from the first two and progress through the last two. Listening identifies and Aiming prioritises these opportunities, identifying the smallest, easiest, and least costly moves that take you where you want to go. The Art of War is about the smaller unstoppable steps, these then compounding in larger leaps over time. Moving teaches you how to respond appropriately to the situations as they are. Claiming identifies the potential, control and the methods for making the best of a new position.
Speed matters - Making quick decisions is critical because fast, short moves are always more powerful than long, large moves. This is a big deal for Sun Tzu. Smaller, faster groups also make more progress than larger, slower groups. You create strategic leverage by putting a small amount of the right resources in the right position at the right time. Windows of opportunity often open for just a moment, you must see and react to them instantly.
Monitoring the environment - Situational strategy is about building the shape of a situation and the environment. As characteristics become clearer, you know the responses necessary. Without that awareness, you cannot see the plot much less know how to respond to it. In marketing this might be monitoring data from multiple sources, combining that with social listening and being plugged in to industry knowledge – all this enabling you to know that the terrain is changing or that a competitor has intentions that impact you.
Avoid competition where possible - An important aspect of situation response is the ability to avoid conflict. Since conflict is costly, you need to see the mistakes that lead up to conflict and avoid them. You develop the insight, looking for ways to make victory pay. Your success is much more certain when conflict is avoided. If you set up situations so that the elements are all in your favor, you discourage people from attacking you and make it much more likely that they will join you.

Success over the long-term doesn’t come from making perfect decisions about opportunities, but simply improving your decision-making.

Sun Tzu’s rules for decision making with limited information

By way of more background, I was also intrigued by the logic in taking the right decision. Given that we know information is relatively limited, you’d think it would be more of a problem. I know most marketers feel that way, but not for Sun Tzu, this is just the natural chaotic environment. For him, control is simply calm moments, in what is an otherwise stormy and chaotic existence. Interesting stuff that feels relevant I’d say. Here’s what Tzu recommends that we ask ourselves:

Is a decision needed? If we have nothing much to gain or nothing much to lose, we should avoid acting on information at all no matter how interesting it is. Action is always costly and just because you can doesn’t mean that you should. Does this decision really need to be made now?
Manage the cost risk in a decision. The value of a decision is only half the equation, does it have a cost if wrong? We make wrong decisions all the time because we don’t have perfect information about the future and those outcomes are invaluable learning tools. Is any decision based on this information safe for the business if the information is wrong?
Ignore information that doesn’t relate to the decision. Information not related to the 5 key elements (above) can be very interesting and quickly distracting – that doesn’t make it relevant. Trend information can be the worst for the this in marketing (“compared to this time last year…”). When information arises ask if this information were different, would it change my decision?
Weigh up the relative importance of information. In competition, everything is a comparison, this is core to Tzun’s teaching. All the remaining information affects our decision, but not all of it is equal in its impact. Which information is most influencing my decision?
Test information quality against our own knowledge. We are are often interrupted and influenced by the worst and most inconsistent information simply because it seems to demand attention. This happens to a frightening extent today, check out all the info-graphics So, Given all we know about the situation we’re in and its history, is this information likely to be true?
Inconsistent information is most likely wrong. Information can be wrong because somebody somewhere has an agenda, or maybe there’s technical or human error, poor team communication, misinterpreting of external events, or maybe things have changed since the information was originally gathered. How can this information be quickly verified?
Balance the cost of collecting more information against the value of quick action. Action might be the quickest and least costly way to get better information. Due to something then happening, a decision and then action is the only way to get more information. If reliable, relevant information can be gathered more quickly and easily without action thenwe should gather it, but decisions can always be avoided by using the excuse that more information must be gathered. Sounds familiar!? So is action the fastest and least expensive way to find out more?
Acting to learn more is usually best. Situations keep changing, and faster than ever. We can never gather enough information to always make the best decision, because so much of what we need to know is unknowable. If action is the best decision, it is best to act now before the situation changes and we need to start again. Doh! So when thinking why wait? it should never be for more information!

We hope that our brief flirt with Sun Tzu’s strategic teaching has been useful? We’d love to know if it helped and entertained or hear how you applied Sun Tzu.

Sun Tzu and the art of digital marketing strategy [Part 1]

Danyl Bosomworth — Fri, 04 May 2012 06:58:30 +0000

What can an ancient text do to help your digital marketing?

This is a question that Dave and I were discussing recently, and we decided the answer was “quite a lot actually” and that a fun and (hopefully!) interesting post might be useful. In this post, I’ll summarise broadly what I took from the book and in my ‘part 2′ post next week, show how we think it can be applied to digital marketing in more detail. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is a widely studied piece of literature, so communicating its principles from reading it feels a little like learning to drive a car by watching a movie with a car chase in it. What I’d immediately remembered (from reading it 9-10 years ago) was that the book itself is short and powerful. Each chapter layers onto what was taught in an earlier chapter. Despite the title indicating otherwise, it’s part science and part philosophy; it centres around the idea of winning without conflict, by competing based on position, not through ‘warfare’. This is immediately powerful and relevant to marketers with experience in brand or marketing strategy. I think that you can summarise the whole book (very crudely) with two questions:

How do I use information that is available to understand my strategic position? How do I make the best decisions to advance my strategic position?

Simple, eh!? And, already applicable to digital marketing. Which is why it’s been so popular in business and why we thought it would be good for us to think about at Smart Insights. The application isn’t so easy, but we’ve outlined the broad context below in the hope that you can ask better questions of your current position – the decisions to advance that position will come along next week as we delve deeper.

Your strategic position – a sticky challenge that plagues modern marketing

We know that strategy fundamentally depends on acquiring and using information to best control situations around us, and we make strategic decisions based upon what we see, hear and understand. For thoroughbred digital marketers, the guys and girls who live in data for decision making, this might hurt initially… we don’t really “know” what’s going on …at least that’s what Sun Tzu would say. We feel that we never have enough information, don’t we? We get paralysed by not having enough information, and equally freeze and get lost if we have too much. Sound familiar? It might feel easier where we can see what we think is under our control, in an analytics dashboard for example, but it’s misleading according to Sun Tzu. We only see and control tiny elements out of the vast amounts of information. Sun Tzu believed that control is the infrequent and misleading exception and chaos is the larger reality, and realising this is where advantage lies. Most information is unknown, or totally unknowable Our perception of reality is full of blind-spots, it’s incomplete, a mix of things that we don’t know and things that are also totally unknowable. The chain of information is also getting weaker as new policies come into place, Dave was talking about this only recently with new EU ‘E-Privacy’ legislation surrounding the use of cookies. That aside, in your own organisation and market, how many times do unexpected ‘events’ occur that throw your data upside down anyway? A lot from my experience; it’s business as usual! We never quite “know”, do we? In marketing, this problem is made worse as more and more data becomes available, more information isn’t necessarily good if there’s no model to process it. By recognising that information is gathered on imperfect models from increasingly imperfect sources, and appreciating that we see “our” reality, not “the” reality, we can choose to widen our view, use better decision making models and make decisions those based on more of what is, rather than what we just think is.

Our opening primer on the 13 chapters of The Art of War

Though not so important as the above to make the point, we’ve laid out the 13 chapters of the book here as a primer, a “digested read”…

Laying Plans- The first chapter is around the five fundamental factors (mission, climate, ground, command and methods) so that a commander (or marketer!) can calculate his or her chances of victory before setting out.Consider the factors for achieving strategic marketing over tactical…. In warfare, as in business, there are three key factors that can determine who will be more likely to win. These three factors are: The moral law; the commander or leadership, as well as the method and management. Much of Sun Tzu’s teaching are about respect and gaining the trust of your army (organisation) and of course your customers (these are an extension of the organisation in 2012). Strong virtues and the discipline of each team member’s roles and responsibilities, including your own provided leadership and clarity, matters enormously. We’ll take a look at this in more detail in the post, next week.
The Challenge - the economy of warfare (marketing) recognises that success requires winning small decisive engagements quickly. Successful military campaigns require limiting the cost of competition and conflict. “In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.” Defeat your opponent fast, so that you won’t become fatigued and you won’t lose strength in resources. This means putting forth all your best efforts to defeat your opponents at the right time and on the right areas, so that competitors lose the desire to win.
The Plan of Attack - a key source of strength is unity, not size, Tzu discusses the five factors that are needed to succeed: Attack, Strategy, Alliances, Army, and Cities. Ensure good preparation and apply the correct strategy, such as working out when indirect approaches will be more effective and less energy-draining than direct approaches. This means knowing your market and marketing thoroughly, learning about the tactics, competition and allies (influencers) that have been around for years, before your time in the game. Look for the strategies that prove most beneficial by using your intelligence and competitive advantage.
Positioning - ”Know your enemy and know yourself“, Sun Tzu warns. If you do so, then you will win a hundred out of a hundred battles, he promises. Detailed knowledge of your opponent means that you know their brand behaviours, their strengths and their limitations. But in order to not have this same tactic applied to you effectively, you must defend existing positions until a commander (or marketer) is capable of advancing from those existing positions in safety. Recognise and pursue opportunities without creating opportunities for the enemy. This also means being able to change tactics when it’s clear that your usual approach is failing – Sun Tzu summed this up as: “He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain”.
Energy - the use of creativity and timing in building an army’s (or organisation’s) momentum. In war, this concerns directing the momentum of the army to focus its energies in the most creative and timely manner without burning all of those precious resources. Having the focus and organising resources around the goals. The best organisations are the ones with talent and where those people commit to their strengths throughout the course of the campaign, they are recognised, organised and encouraged by the leaders.
Illusion and Reality - an army’s (or organisation’s) opportunities come from the openings in the environment caused by the relative weakness of the enemy in a given area. “Strike the weak and avoid the strong”, Sun Tzu advises. Again, you need to know your enemy well in order to spot their weak points, and then attack them. Being first to attack puts you in the stronger position because you lead the way according to how you have chosen (imposing your intent), and for your opponent, playing catch-up is much harder.
Engaging The Force - the dangers of direct conflict and how to win those confrontations when they are forced upon the commander. Manoeuvre with intelligence. You can lead an army of 1000 soldiers as easily as 10 – it is only a matter of signs and communication. Establish a common language between you and your organisation, a strong sense of ‘brand purpose’ is powerful. Implement good communication and trust in your team. Remember that the base for a cohesive and cooperative team is clear, constant communication and mutual support.
Variation in Tactics - focus on the need for flexibility in an army’s (or organisation’s) responses. Respond to shifting circumstances successfully. Vary your tactics, and you win. There are two attack methods: the direct and the indirect. The direct method may be used openly, they’re expected, but indirect methods to secure victory are the unforeseen, the unexpected, they throw the confidence of your competition. Be sure to disguise your intentions as best as possible, to avoid detection when you’re about to vary your approach.
Moving The Force - the different situations in which an army (or organisation) finds itself as it moves through new territories, how to respond to these situations, understand the intentions of other organisations. As your army (organisation) progresses, remember to sustain all your aims on winning throughout the campaign. Try to understand your opponent’s strategy and destroy it, and bear in mind at all times that: “The clever fighter imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him”. Watch for the competitors changes in tactics and situation.
Situational Positioning - the three general areas of resistance (distance, dangers, and barriers) and the six types of ground positions that arise from them. These are the six ways of ground. They are the general’s responsibility, and must be examined. In warfare, they are flight, insubordination, deterioration, collapse, chaos, and setback. These six situations are not caused by Heaven or Ground, but by the general and the situation. Success and Failure in any organisation starts from the top. The leader (strategist, CEO) is responsible for any and all events that occurs in the organisation.
The Nine Situations - describes the nine common situations in a campaign, and the specific focus that a commander (marketer) will need in order to successfully navigate them. Use the best position and tactics in relation to the environment and to your competition. Threaten your competition’s remaining valuable strategies and positioning to prevent them from connecting their weakness with their strengths. Know how to drive your competition into a position where their weaker self is all they have left to rely upon. Where it is clear that your opponent has failed to adequately prepare for the situation, strike fast if they let a door open.
Fiery Attack - the use of weapons (tactics and techniques) and the specific use of the environment as a weapon. Be “fast as the wind” and as “unmovable” as the forest. That means that your attack must be very quick, but your campaign and positioning should remain very consistent. Remember that the army who wins is the one that shares the same spirit throughout all its ranks, keeping true and remaining consistent. This section examines the five targets for attack, the five types of environmental attack and the responses to attacks.
The Use of Intelligence – the importance of developing trusted information sources. When you have the opportunity, inquire about your competition’s type of campaign, weaknesses and strengths from people in a position to know best; of course, with the advent of the Internet this has never been easier, something Sun Tzu didn’t have available! Make the most of your sources of information to learn all that you can about your opponent. The secret of great princes and warriors that were regarded as geniuses was in actual fact principally only previous knowledge, noted diligently and then well applied.

You can see part 2 of this post here – we’ve applied how Sun Tzu suggested understanding your position, and in turn how to advance it with effective decision making. Some great Sun Tzu resources – I’ve referenced multiple great resources (including the book here) which you can see here, here and here. Check them out, it’s genuinely useful stuff to help move from purely tactical decision making to strategic decision making.

Social commerce growth [infographic]

Danyl Bosomworth — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:31:51 +0000

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…

5 Tips for Outstanding PPC Creative

Chris Soames — Thu, 03 May 2012 07:01:10 +0000

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. As my First 10 & Smart Insights colleague Dan Bosomworth would say at this point, “the tail should not wag the dog”. Test the points below on your top 3-5 ad-groups or campaigns, depending on your account size and see how your adverts perform, it should force a different kind of approach / thinking to your adverts.

1. Think people first

Remember your prospects typically have a problem, a question, they are hunting for something. You are a potential brand / business that can help answer problems and questions, provide solutions and aid in making the right choice. But your advert has to firstly be considered from that customer’s world view. For your main keywords write down their pain points, questions, motivations, feelings, demographics before starting the copywriting. Action point: List per AdGroup / campaign (depending on the size of your account) the pain points, questions, motivations of your potential customers.

2. Remembers the purpose of the ad

To get the click! That’s it, pure and simple. If you’re not getting the clicks you can’t convert on the site, you’re going to harm your quality score and so pay more. Your advert doesn’t and cannot say everything. So getting across what’s important and having confidence in your landing page (with point one in mind) to be able to do the rest and engage that user is an absolute must. This is a difficult ask, as you want to make sure you say enough and yet as already mentioned it cannot get everything across, you have to prioritise and commit to a primary message. Action point: Separate the objective of your ad-text & landing page. List them both out to aid discussion about what best fits in a text-ad.

3. Ignore character lengths… to start with…

PPC adverts are restrictive and challenging. 25 character titles, 35 character descriptions, display URLS and you have 10 things you want to say, 5 ways of saying it and who knows which one will be the best?! It can be mind-boggling. But, with point one and two well and truly understood you should focus on writing long hand what message you believe you need to get across. In fact, write 3 alternative ways of saying the same message. Action point: Write in bullets or short sentences the message you wish to get across in your advert, ideally write several versions per ad-group.

4. Remember you’re selling. Sizzle vs the sausage

Reflect back on your actions up until this point, it is very easy, especially if this is a PPC account you spend a lot of time in to start to include features of your product / service in the adverts. If you think back to point one, features don’t relate to pain points or questions. Benefits do however! Action point: Check back through your adverts and adjust with benefits not features in mind. If you are not clear write two lists, features and benefits. Then refine your adverts.

5. Get other people involved

PPC adverts are not a one person job. It requires different skills and world views to get them right. After you have finished with points 1 > 4 you should pass to a colleague to take a pass through and evolve them forwards. At this point you would then, either between you or using a copywriter, aim to get your work so far working in the practical constraints of a Google text ad (good luck we are all counting on you). Action point: Pass your work to press to another team member and refine into text ads you are going to trial either between you or with a copy writer. In a future blog post I will look at a more technical and practical guide for PPC adverts bringing in how to make best use of dynamic keyword insertion and the like. In the mean Expert members can check section 5 of the 7 Steps guide to Google Adwords that can be found here

Remember, it is never, ever, ever, ever finished

It is a process. Just like the direct marketing of old, PPC is a channel focussed on data, it is refined based on data, tested based on data, turned up, down, on or off based on data… It is never done or complete, always testing based on priorities, never ending!

Are you making the most of LinkedIn Skills?

Chris Soames — Wed, 02 May 2012 06:27:40 +0000

Using the LinkedIn Skills feature for career development or identifying influencers

This is a relatively new feature in LinkedIn that pulls data from its now enormous user-base to create both an interesting and useful tool. In this post, I’ll first take a look at how the size and growth of different digital marketing sectors and then in the second part suggest how you can apply this tool. I think the tool has four primary uses, but let us know if you use it in other ways:

Finding influencers
Sourcing new groups / businesses to follow to aid personal growth
Personal Profile growth / visibility
Finding new employees

A look at the growth in digital skills

I have reviewed the size and growth of some of the core digital marketing skills below to show the kind of trends we are seeing in skills related to digital marketing. I’ve looked at some of the more established skills and also upcoming skills such as social media. The size and growth of these sector is useful for seeing where your opportunity lies on a personal and business level.

Email marketing

Still a vital technique in online marketing, email skills and subjects have become much more focussed according to LinkedIn with deliverability and strategy two specialist areas. The number of LinkedIn users with email as a skill sits at the 750k+ mark so a very high userbase. A majority of that user base sitting in the 25-34 age bracket. A skill still very much required from businesses it would appear.

Web Analytics

With 7% YoY on LinkedIn, web or digital analytics is an ever growing and vital area of marketing. Conversion seems to be the key skill area within analytics whether it is specifically conversion optimisation or landing pages etc. Not quite as competitive as some other skills and yet an increasingly important role in effective marketing.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Another large skills area on LinkedIn and very competitive. It has grown 24% YoY and has the usual related skills such as keyword research & link building, everything you would come to expect. With over 390k in this category it is one of the larger skills related to online marketing too. If you are developing your skills in this area, you should consider techniques that relate but are not as competitive, such as content creation, inbound marketing, on-page optimisation etc.

Social media marketing

One of the faster growing areas online, which I am sure doesn’t come as a surprise! Up 42% YoY and with some interesting related skills growing at a similar rate (though much, much smaller volumes) such as pinterest and hootsuite. Larger than SEO & email with over 800k users it is definitely the most competitive space to be. Largely dominated by the 18-36 age bracket, it is interesting to see such a vast amount of users in that space. Differentiating and focussing on specific areas is a key if you are to be successful in this area.

Inbound Marketing

The term coined by marketing software company HubSpot and used now to describe the difference in marketing techniques due to the evolution in technology and customer needs. Amazingly, the skill set has reduced on LinkedIn YoY by 7%, with only 155k users with this particular skill. Interesting inbound lead generation is on the rise as is HubSpot showing again more people focussing their skills on aspects of marketing rather than been too broad. Interestingly also dominated by an older work force, 30+ which could mean it is quite often seen as a more strategic skill… Depending on your ambitions, using the data above and from your own research on LinkedIn it is key you think how you position yourself on the business social network as you can imagine what this means for head hunting and future job opportunities. Been able to filter people by skill, location & potentially influence within a matter of clicks.

Tips for making the most of LinkedIn Skills

Personal and career use

The most obvious thing to take a look at is the skills sets you have entered for your profile. See this help topic on adding or changing skills on your profile. Some ideas:

Broaden the range of skills on your profile.
Maybe you are missing some skills which are described in different ways.
Perhaps you can add niche skills as well as broad categories
Join related groups and become active in them, increasing your own influence as a result

Using LinkedIn Skills to Identify Influencers

Within the LinkedIn Skills area, it is easy to see the influential people within a given field (or rather the most connected). As part of researching through this service you should consider the following points:

Is this influencer a blogger / active in communities – This way you can follow them and likely learn too
Do you have content they would find fascinating that they may want to share?
Are you connected with them (do they have a reason too, if not, create one)

Remember that influence on LinkedIn is largely based on number of connections and related skills, quite a simple algorithm.

Is Facebook Timeline Increasing Engagement for Brands?

Danyl Bosomworth — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:28:30 +0000

Early studies reveal a mixed message

Value: ★★★ Recommended link: Simply Measured Timeline engagement data Dave has recently covered 9 recommendations for the new Facebook Timeline pages for brands. These switched over on the 30 March 2012. The question is, has this new platform helped or hindered marketers? Some light is shed on this by this initial data from social analytics software provider Simply Measured, that suggests the change is having a very significant upside for brands.

Average of 46% improvement in engagement across 15 brands

Simply Measured looked at 15 early adopting brand page and found that average engagement on brand posts (comments and Likes) rose 46% in the three weeks after the switch compared to the three weeks before. Prior to the Timeline introduction, the 15 brand pages saw an average of 1,672 points of engagement per post, rising to 2,441 after switching to Timeline.

Little overall improvement for another 43 brands

Simply Measured got my attention since I saw this when reading this from Wildfire, suggesting that engagement was lower, specifically for larger brands of which Wildfire has monitored 43 of of them. The table below from Emarketer is interesting, only in that it suggests that the much smaller brand Fan pages that are benefitting most.

How are you finding it? Good or bad?

Timeline is clearly creating measurable flux on many brand pages, but the data is too sparse at the minute. Our opinion is that any positive change is likely temporary whilst people find it interesting and there’s a little hype. Fundamentally, Timeline has afforded us new tools and a new format to deliver engaging content, it’s ultimately for brands to do just that, to create campaigns and tactics that drive new fans to the page and turn them into advocates. Without doubt, watch this space as more data and useful case studies come to the for. Have you any experiences that support or contradict the above?

Are you seeking a content editor or a brand journalist?

Danyl Bosomworth — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:47:03 +0000

Customer over corporate-led communications

We’re currently hiring at First 10. A friend asked me what kind of roles we’re looking to fill. My response was, “two brand journalists“. She was puzzled, “do you mean PRs“, she said? “…aren’t there loads of people in marketing who can write?” My response: “Not really, it’s a different blend of skill-sets and a totally different motivation.” I embraced the whole idea of “brand journalism” via a book by David Meerman-Scott, I read 3-4 years ago, it’s made increasing sense since. The way a journalist approaches an article is simply different from the way that somebody who is good at writing approaches an article. A brand journalist works inside the company across all content formats, writing and producing videos, blog posts, photos, webinars, articles, e-books and podcasts. It’s about producing the content that is relevant to, that engages prospects and customers, which is something that Marketing Profs recently highlighted was the major content marketing challenge for B2B marketers:

Cut the sales talk

Brand journalists will communicate brand value by uncovering the stories about the live brand and how your customers are using its products, services and experiences. Not what the products and services are and how they work. Not the brand itself. What its history is, how to use it, how special it is… blah, blah, blah. That’s called “advertising.” And, on its own (maybe at all), that doesn’t work any more. Quality content “written for me” is marketing in a human, accessible way that sparks reactions, or conversation. It is not the technical ability to write a press release, sales copy, generate clever strap lines, to run a media relations campaign or organise a product launch, for example.

How do brand journalists tell brand stories that resonate?

A brand journalists brings an editorial approach to building a brand. So, here’s what I thought about after my conversation, hopefully it it’s of some use if your recruiting someone similar : 1. An audience first mentality Journalists naturally put the needs of the consuming audience (vs. that of the company) first. That serves a brand’s needs far better – the content that they create is customer-driven vs. product or service-driven. Their training means that every time they sit down to write they actually believe deep down, “Nobody has to read this”. Do you think people in advertising think that? The opposite is true! That kind of pressure on content-creation benefits your brand. It’s ‘right side up’ messaging. 2. They can keep it simple Marketers, sales people and management tend to make things complicated, at least in the first instance. Me included. We’re more often oriented around a mix of product or service messaging, briefs, sales problem, commercial issues or objectives, so seeing the wood from the trees is not always easy whilst there’s blinding sales pressures. Journalists however, make the complex more easily understood, it’s what they do. They assume the reader has a low attention span, knows nothing, is not stupid and have little time on their hands. 3. They can sniff out the value Journalists believe that there’s always a story or an angle, somewhere. So run-of-the-mill tech products, professional services firms or any undifferentiated brands can be made relevant by the way that the journalist frames a perspective – remembering the values, beliefs and world-view (a Seth Godin term, I love it) of the audience. 4. They tell the truth I write this point with a wry smile given the News Of The World / phone hacking scandals here in the UK. Though, given that’s “big business” wanting to sell more newspapers, I choose to believe that journalists are still schooled in serious research, in backing up opinions with facts and that ideas are fairly referenced against their sources. This code of ethics enhances brand values, builds trust – providing a base for genuine thought leadership. 5. Their purpose is to enhance brand credibility A “brand journalist” is a twist on conventional journalism since by definition it’s never truly impartial. The journalist is employed after all, so cannot really turn against the company, easily at least. It’s the meaning behind the name “brand journalist” that matters to me, the idea raised by David Meerman-Scott. It’s the intent behind employing such person that speaks volumes about a brand. It’s clear what the role does and doesn’t do. It describes a new wave of marketing.

New Google Spam Algorithm Update

Chris Soames — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 07:13:38 +0000

Google Targets Low Quality Sites Again

Source : Google Inside Search Blog Importance : ★★★★

Our Commentary

Google has started the rollout of a small algorithm update targeting poor quality websites. It’s been dubbed Penguin by SearchEngineLand. The techniques Google are targeting as part of this update are not new and Google has been combating them for years already. In their blog post announcing the change Google explain they are targeting both anchor text of links and quality of content on a page as primary focus. When looking at the examples used to explain the the type of spam they are targeting – you can see it is very keyword heavy copy or irrelevant links as part of the content as this image shows. It’s from an example of a site Google calls out which it is targeting: It’s a good thing, I think as it’s another blow against lazy SEOs and spammers and Google has certainly given sufficient warning through warnings to some siteowners through Google Webmaster tool are consistent advice from their blogs:

We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites Source: Google

So, good news for businesses that want to create a brand, quality products and experiences. A blow for highly competitive niches where it is typically difficult to be creative and web spammers are active. Compared to the Panda changes, this update will only affect around 3% of English web queries so quite a small change in reality, though I believe combined with all recent updates a lot of poor quality sites will cease to exist in any meaningful way. Surprisingly from reading on sites such as SearchEngineLand many people in the SEO industry are fed up with these changes. Astounding really, the fact is Google is a dominating force, its actions feel sensible and it is challenging businesses to step up, be remarkable and put effort in. The days of automated content scraping and link building are no more and lets face it, it has taken Google long enough to catch up with these lazy techniques. I don’t think SEO has died or is dying, it has just changed, as everything does.

Our Recommendations

It is easy to get confused with the messages from Google, the lines between white & black hat SEO are in a state of flux depending on who you speak to and what day of the week it is… What we do however know, is creating highly engaging websites which require quality design and high quality content that is updated regularly is what is liked. That does require that your content is well organised and you have researched your keywords effectively, so very much still a place for On-page optimisation.

4 tips for ensuring you stay in Google’s Good Books

Check your backlinks for signs of low quality or spammy links (utilise MajesticSEO or OpenSiteExplorer to help analyse)
Ensure you only have high quality content on your site (check any external news finds or copy writer work), put another way, only create amazing content for your brand and audience
Complete quarterly SEO audits and run training with internal teams every 6 months
Ask your agencies about the types of links they will generate for you as part of an initial pitching process and ongoing reviews

Integrating LinkedIn into your B2B website

Chris Soames — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 14:51:11 +0000

The 4 most important tools for LinkedIn & your business

LinkedIn is the most important social networks for B2B marketers who are taking online marketing seriously, particularly in the UK and US. LinkedIn now has an array of tools to help bridge the gap between the network and your own website, they’re getting better and better and I wanted to share them with you. With 5.5 Million users in the UK alone (growing daily) there is an opportunity for all B2B businesses on LinkedIn. As part of integrating LinkedIn on your website you need to also consider how you connect and interact on LinkedIn. You should checkout a recent post on Oatmeal that made us all chuckle, it highlights how so many companies take a very lame approach to Facebook, the same principal applies to LinkedIn. You have to remember LinkedIn isn’t a silver bullet for online B2B marketing but it is a powerful tool, it takes time, investment and real purpose but the rewards are there…

1. Your remarkable content needs to be shareable

Possibly the most simple of the integrations is the share button. However, the share button assumes you are creating content worth sharing! As a B2B business you have to ensure that your business is publishing quality content that helps position you as a thought leader. Content will spark discussion, if good enough it will get shared and ultimately will bring new prospects to your website! It seems so obvious to have a simple share button, but you would be surprised how many have yet to implement.

2. Up-to-date LinkedIn team details

Utilising your LinkedIn business profile (and those of your team) within your website is a great way to keep your “about the team” section of your website alive. These two simple plugins allow profiles to be pulled from LinkedIn onto any page of your website. This means you keep one profile up-to-date and not multiple. It allows people to see current employees and of course their recommendations.

3. Develop credibility with reviews

B2B business are more likely pretty good at promoting themselves, especially to peers etc, but what about letting your customers say that you are great, that would be even better, right? LinkedIn can do this, and having a 3rd party handle recommendations gives an increased level of credibility. The recommendations plugin from LinkedIn will help you achieve just that. People can view or write reviews about your products or services through this neat little app.

4. Allow followers to keep up to date on company updates

Lead & you shall be followed. As simple as the share button, if people like the cut of your jib you need to ensure it is easy to follow your company. By selecting to follow you, users will receive notifications on their profile when you add company content, products, services or text updates. If you are publishing great content all the time then you will constantly be front of mind for your followers.

Think beyond your blog for maximum website engagement

Danyl Bosomworth — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 10:38:39 +0000

5 ideas for creating effective content on your website

We talk a lot in our posts about the importance of content and inbound marketing, that being central to success and a how blog is the key for building a central repository of useful, insightful or entertaining content for your website visitors.

A blog really does have the potential to be ‘the hub’ in regards to content marketing. But what are the other options on your site, assuming that you have a blog section already and you feel that you’re doing it well enough, what’s next?

Well, a question in my inbox this morning from a Smart Insights Expert member got me thinking on this. Subject to the realities of your website, its flexibility, ability to scale and of course your access to people or budget resources, there’s tonnes that you can now consider beyond a blog.

Our 5 ideas: Think sales first

Think of the buyer funnel, the persona types at different buyer stages. Start at the buyer stage and work up that funnel, this way you’re making sure that you aren’t leaking sales or leads before you layer on content and ideas that are, commercially at least, softer though no less important when you have a medium-term attitude to sales and income.

1. Product (or service) information

Are you doing the best job possible to ensure you’re getting all the buyers that you can, with the traffic that you have? We’d suggest that the most important place to start is here and nobody internally is going to hate you for that. This point is particularly important for e-commerce sites – there’s a huge difference on the quality of product information across e-commerce sites, are you using those content fields to maximum advantage? Optimise product pages to death, otherwise we’re missing the point in the first place, right? Think about quality, unique content, keyword usage, product page titles, user content and feedback, practical ordering/returns information, page design and layout. What content is on there – any video of those products? What about great images that I can enlarge and zoom in from multiple angles? Make product realted pages as strong and visible as possible, scour your offices for the best information that you could add. Want inspiration? Check out ASOS below, doing an awesome job aside from the unhappy model! There’s even video. Another great example here from Firebox though the page is a tad cluttered.

Product pages aren’t just a B2C concern of course – if you’re B2B there’s even more reason, and less of an excuse, to get this right since you’ll have way more product (or service) detail information, and way less products or services to improve. Here’s a good example from the now Adobe-owned Omniture Site Catalyst software, possibly too much information though it is well sign-posted.

2. Case studies, ratings, reviews and testimonials

Another superb example here from Firebox.com (again aside from a little bit of a cluttered design) of not only a fantastic B2C product page but see how they allow user ratings, user videos and reviews of the videos, user photos, user comments via Facebook Comments API integration and even Reviews and FAQ’s, more on that in the next point below.

B&Q’s also provide an easy way to rate and make feedback immediate, visible and shareable. What testimonials are you using or could use? Also check out their “I did that” section where they’re growing an increasing number of customer stories alongside their TV advertising campaign.

Again, this is most often easier for B2B applications – there are less customers and yet more are willing to promote or be promoted in return as formal case studies or testimonials, see software provider Eloqua with video case study / testimonials as well as their repository of rich text case studies organised by business sector or market.

3. Social Q&A (an FAQ in the very least!)

Jay Baer posted on this a while ago. Consider a Q&A on your own site, where not only you (the marketer) get to kick-off with the traditional FAQ, but you can scale as a community tool with self generating content. This is easiest on B2B websites I’d suggest, since you’re more likely going to already have a volume of people with an explicit question or problem about something, people who aren’t sensitive either about registering with a work email address. At the high end see the example from Dell below, they have their “Social Q&A for IT Professionals” section embedded within their community and separate from the forums, nice! See one of the original Tech Social Q&A sites here too: Stackoverflow.

No excuses either for smaller B2C sites… as Jay Baer says, just start with an FAQ on a CMS-able page and ask people to click here if they have a question, i.e you make the FAQ social, see this B2C example on Tilda.com as the no excuses / do something version…

4. News, resources and downloads

Again – this area is way easier for B2B businesses, simply because they tend to have access to richer content and papers behind the scenes, and budget, plus there’s more industry content to re-work, re-write and re-originate with your own brand in mind. Look again at the Adobe SiteCatalyst product page example and all the links to Adobe resources, and Eloqua the content maniacs (in a nice way). This is typically educational content, though can be information/entertainment too of course. For B2B think whitepapers, webinars and videos that all seek to support buyers earlier in the decision making process, you’re helping to solve their problems. Sections like this on B2B sites become topic and/or product data centre’s when done very well, companies like Hubspot are superb at it too.

B2C will see more content being about product details and people using it, or talking about it. The example below is good since shows a charity angle on the idea of resources, giving people a lot of information to consider. You can see here how your blog, with other rich content on the site, can very quickly extend into something more akin to an ‘online magazine’ too, this example from Cancer Research UK and below for their main resources page…

You can incorporate the idea of a social media newsroom too, something that I’ve covered before, see Cancer Research’s news page here…

5. Rich media library content

People love video, it’s a “now” content medium if ever there was one. You can think about Podcasts too of course but they’re less popular and video is really paving the way (nice post here on that recently from a guest blogger Neil Davidson). If you’re creating video, or you’re interested in collating other peoples videos to share from your site (assuming that’s relevant of course), then a media library is a great way to do that. I found that B&Q are doing a great job on their DIY.com site, they’ve seriously lifted their game and now have their massive collection of videos that they’ve cleverly chosen to host on YouTube, now officially this isn’t on their site (as per the title of this blog!), but with the volume of videos they have it makes no sense to put it on their site, why? The cost to host and serve that much rich media would be a fortune, more importantly they’re sharing arguable the most powerful content in the worlds second largest search engine where people are seeking entertainment, information and how-to’s. Of course from YouTube you can use their API to pull selected videos back to your website and have the best of both worlds. Have a look for a best practise rich media page…

Hopefully this has been of some use, anything you agree, disagree with? Would you add more to this list of 5, let us know.