Came across this cracking banner ad.
'Once you click you can't stop'. http://awardshome.com/cannes2009/pringles/can-hands.html
Friday, 3 July 2009
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Social Media – Why marketers can’t afford to ignore it
Pull recently held a Social Media Roundtable for an interested group of staff, clients and friends. This was an informal gathering that sort of morphed into being. Perhaps that was because we were motivated as much by the chance for some real social interaction in the sunny garden of a local hostelry. . .
We all agreed though that it was a very productive session despite the loose agenda, and have already agreed a follow-up session for 28th August. We will publish a venue and put a sign-up form on our website, but for now, if you are not a million miles from Godalming in Surrey, and have an interest in social media, please drop us a line to register your interest.
The subject of our little get together was: “Social Media – how to use it in business”. I should point out that we approached the subject with the full range of attitudes from: “More like Social Not-working – if I hear one more person twittering on about Twitter. . .” to: “Forget the rest of Internet Marketing, this is the future”.
However, I think it’s fair to say that everyone left the table with the view that any marketer ignores social media to their peril. If you aren’t doing it, and doing it well, your competitor probably is, and you will be playing catch-up. As someone once said: “There are those that make things happen, and there are those who wonder what happened. . .”
These were the key conclusions of this initial exploration of the subject for us:
Forget “Web 2.0”: This phrase has confused the real developments in the use of the web. The real revolution has not been a technical but a social one, with the Push of the web being complemented by a wave of interactivity.
“Multilogues” are at the heart of the new social media phenomenon. One-to-one, and one- to-many communications of the early web paradigm are now complemented by many-to-many communications facilitated by applications like Facebook and Twitter.
Don’t get hung up by the technology platforms: You could waste a lot of time studying the evolution and anthropology of e.g. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc. Over time, winners will emerge, losers go away, and new services arrive. Picking the right set of platforms for your social media strategy is important, but as the cost of adoption is minimal; don’t get drawn in to the kind of MySpace vs. Facebook type of arguments.
Smaller firms need guidance through the social media maelstrom. A number of representatives of small to medium-sized businesses said that they would value guidance, and a kind of “how to” approach to successfully implementing social media. As an Internet Marketing agency we will certainly be trying to rise to this particular challenge.
Larger firms are nervous about out-of-control social media. And as a result stifling the consumption and production of social media in their company. However, savvy larger companies are making the most of it, and treating social media the same as they proactively treated PR: Train the right people, and trust them to do the right thing.
We enjoyed a presentation from Emma who works in the adventure travel industry, and has created social media strategies for two companies - including an award-winning approach based around Facebook that built consumer loyalty, and also generated orders. This is a synopsis of the tips she provided the group.
Posted by Chris
We all agreed though that it was a very productive session despite the loose agenda, and have already agreed a follow-up session for 28th August. We will publish a venue and put a sign-up form on our website, but for now, if you are not a million miles from Godalming in Surrey, and have an interest in social media, please drop us a line to register your interest.
The subject of our little get together was: “Social Media – how to use it in business”. I should point out that we approached the subject with the full range of attitudes from: “More like Social Not-working – if I hear one more person twittering on about Twitter. . .” to: “Forget the rest of Internet Marketing, this is the future”.
However, I think it’s fair to say that everyone left the table with the view that any marketer ignores social media to their peril. If you aren’t doing it, and doing it well, your competitor probably is, and you will be playing catch-up. As someone once said: “There are those that make things happen, and there are those who wonder what happened. . .”
These were the key conclusions of this initial exploration of the subject for us:
Forget “Web 2.0”: This phrase has confused the real developments in the use of the web. The real revolution has not been a technical but a social one, with the Push of the web being complemented by a wave of interactivity.
“Multilogues” are at the heart of the new social media phenomenon. One-to-one, and one- to-many communications of the early web paradigm are now complemented by many-to-many communications facilitated by applications like Facebook and Twitter.
Don’t get hung up by the technology platforms: You could waste a lot of time studying the evolution and anthropology of e.g. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc. Over time, winners will emerge, losers go away, and new services arrive. Picking the right set of platforms for your social media strategy is important, but as the cost of adoption is minimal; don’t get drawn in to the kind of MySpace vs. Facebook type of arguments.
Smaller firms need guidance through the social media maelstrom. A number of representatives of small to medium-sized businesses said that they would value guidance, and a kind of “how to” approach to successfully implementing social media. As an Internet Marketing agency we will certainly be trying to rise to this particular challenge.
Larger firms are nervous about out-of-control social media. And as a result stifling the consumption and production of social media in their company. However, savvy larger companies are making the most of it, and treating social media the same as they proactively treated PR: Train the right people, and trust them to do the right thing.
We enjoyed a presentation from Emma who works in the adventure travel industry, and has created social media strategies for two companies - including an award-winning approach based around Facebook that built consumer loyalty, and also generated orders. This is a synopsis of the tips she provided the group.
- Play down your brand and sales approach in blogs and forums you facilitate and twitters you make – resist the temptation to make every intervention a product plug
- Build social media into an integrated marketing approach
- Deploy a Permission Marketing approach (give them an incentive to get involved) and also:
- “Give something away” in terms of dropping the corporate facade and showing a more human face
- Allow as many posting as possible – exercise minimal editorial control
- Answer queries that appear, and address negative comment – without being too defensive – others will likely jump to your company’s defence
- Track visitor journeys using analytics programmes to measure your social media platforms role in creating sales
Posted by Chris
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Re-claiming your online brand
How does your brand appear in search results? Although most of our clients are looking beyond scoring the #1 spot for their brand; towards securing a larger market share of valuable generic search phrases, it pays for every company to take care of their brand online – and nowadays, this mean how your brand appears in search.
“Home” isn’t a good search result title
Recently we were showing client Lee Cooper the before and after of search for the term “Lee Cooper”. Before rebuilding and optimising their sites, Lee Cooper were number one result, for a “Lee Cooper” search, but with the entry: “Home – Lee Cooper” and that was it. A Flash-only Home page and no meta-data meant that was the full scope of their presence on the page. The rest of the page was dominated by discount retailers vying to offer the biggest discount. Hardly a tribute to Lee Coopers brand values.
Dominate the results page with key messages
The Lee Cooper “after” result was a classic story of taking responsibility for your brand in search. How many brands miss the opportunity to use the hidden meta-description tag to get their key brand message across and leave this to fate? As you can see from the "after" result, we made sure that the title tag (the header in blue of a Google result) included other key targeted search terms, and the description tag (what appears underneath) was carefully chosen copy and not some random text picked up by Google. Also that the brand had “site links” – the subsidiary links under the main result listing (we’ll blog about how you get these later). Under that are two results for the online store we built, and under that three clips placed on YouTube. Net result? Lee Cooper, with a 100 year plus heritage as Britain’s leading jean brand has claimed all of the above-the-fold space on Google, with calculated search results demoting the previous jumble of brand claimants and discount retailers.
Not just a pretty result
Needless to say, the effect is not just better expression of the Lee Cooper brand values. Traffic to the Lee Cooper main site has doubled since we launched the new sites last November – trebled if you include the new Lee Cooper online store.
What about your brand?
Check it out. If what you see isn’t perfect. Talk to us, and we can help you re-claim your brand.
Posted by Chris
“Home” isn’t a good search result title
Recently we were showing client Lee Cooper the before and after of search for the term “Lee Cooper”. Before rebuilding and optimising their sites, Lee Cooper were number one result, for a “Lee Cooper” search, but with the entry: “Home – Lee Cooper” and that was it. A Flash-only Home page and no meta-data meant that was the full scope of their presence on the page. The rest of the page was dominated by discount retailers vying to offer the biggest discount. Hardly a tribute to Lee Coopers brand values.
Dominate the results page with key messages
The Lee Cooper “after” result was a classic story of taking responsibility for your brand in search. How many brands miss the opportunity to use the hidden meta-description tag to get their key brand message across and leave this to fate? As you can see from the "after" result, we made sure that the title tag (the header in blue of a Google result) included other key targeted search terms, and the description tag (what appears underneath) was carefully chosen copy and not some random text picked up by Google. Also that the brand had “site links” – the subsidiary links under the main result listing (we’ll blog about how you get these later). Under that are two results for the online store we built, and under that three clips placed on YouTube. Net result? Lee Cooper, with a 100 year plus heritage as Britain’s leading jean brand has claimed all of the above-the-fold space on Google, with calculated search results demoting the previous jumble of brand claimants and discount retailers.
Not just a pretty result
Needless to say, the effect is not just better expression of the Lee Cooper brand values. Traffic to the Lee Cooper main site has doubled since we launched the new sites last November – trebled if you include the new Lee Cooper online store.
What about your brand?
Check it out. If what you see isn’t perfect. Talk to us, and we can help you re-claim your brand.
Posted by Chris
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Paid Search results beat Organic
“Stop your Pay Per Click advertising when you get to page one of Google”. Right or wrong? Well we have been repeating this received mantra since we have been in the business. It seems to make sense – why pay to get on to page one of a search engine when you’ve got there for free?
Got there at last!
Well a recent analysis of a client’s organic search optimisation and Pay Per Click advertising gave us a surprising result. Tracking a key search term in the organic results, we were all delighted to see that the client was now in the number two position on Google – the results of eighteen months of effort. Eighteen months ago they were #100, one year ago #20, and this week from #3 to #2 (number 1 was held by the manufacturer of the product they sold, who had a Google PageRank of 7, so probably as good as it was going to get).
So let’s save some money
So was it time to stop advertising against that search term? We checked how many click-throughs the ad had generated so far this month – it was 444 (the ad’s average position was 2.3). Then we checked the click-throughs from the same search term in the organic results (we selected all the terms that would also have served the ad as it was on “broad match”). To our surprise the organic click-throughs were lower: 128 to be precise. So the #2 ad was generating more click-throughs than the #2 organic result on the same first page of Google; at a ratio of 3.5:1.
Two good results are better than one
So the learning for us was that even a top-scoring Google result shouldn’t mean that you would immediately cancel your PPC ad. What this experience suggests is that perceived wisdom – that you cancel your ad when your organic result is good enough - is wrong, and that like News, all good search engine results are good for your business. It’s also worth bearing in mind that although you should have a lot of control over the contents of an organic result (through the page description meta field) – you don’t have complete control like you do in a PPC ad.
In fact you could argue that two entries - one sponsored, one "above the fold" - on Google is the perfect position to be in; at the end of the day "real estate" has always counted in advertising.
Organic result or PPC – which has the best conversion rate?
Google Analytics is currently being coded into this site, so we will be able to answer the next question soon: which result – organic or paid for – gets the best conversion rate for the same key phrase? Watch this space!
Post Script
And the winner is. . . paid for. Even though the client in question is now #1 organic result on Google, the paid for terms is outscoring the organic term by the following (for one month)
Search term: Organic results - 362 visits, 1.1% conversion ration (sales to visits), value per visit: £1
Search term: Paid for results - 1,718 visits, 1.75% conversion ration (sales to visits), value per visit: £1.66
Posted by Dean
Got there at last!
Well a recent analysis of a client’s organic search optimisation and Pay Per Click advertising gave us a surprising result. Tracking a key search term in the organic results, we were all delighted to see that the client was now in the number two position on Google – the results of eighteen months of effort. Eighteen months ago they were #100, one year ago #20, and this week from #3 to #2 (number 1 was held by the manufacturer of the product they sold, who had a Google PageRank of 7, so probably as good as it was going to get).
So let’s save some money
So was it time to stop advertising against that search term? We checked how many click-throughs the ad had generated so far this month – it was 444 (the ad’s average position was 2.3). Then we checked the click-throughs from the same search term in the organic results (we selected all the terms that would also have served the ad as it was on “broad match”). To our surprise the organic click-throughs were lower: 128 to be precise. So the #2 ad was generating more click-throughs than the #2 organic result on the same first page of Google; at a ratio of 3.5:1.
Two good results are better than one
So the learning for us was that even a top-scoring Google result shouldn’t mean that you would immediately cancel your PPC ad. What this experience suggests is that perceived wisdom – that you cancel your ad when your organic result is good enough - is wrong, and that like News, all good search engine results are good for your business. It’s also worth bearing in mind that although you should have a lot of control over the contents of an organic result (through the page description meta field) – you don’t have complete control like you do in a PPC ad.
In fact you could argue that two entries - one sponsored, one "above the fold" - on Google is the perfect position to be in; at the end of the day "real estate" has always counted in advertising.
Organic result or PPC – which has the best conversion rate?
Google Analytics is currently being coded into this site, so we will be able to answer the next question soon: which result – organic or paid for – gets the best conversion rate for the same key phrase? Watch this space!
Post Script
And the winner is. . . paid for. Even though the client in question is now #1 organic result on Google, the paid for terms is outscoring the organic term by the following (for one month)
Search term: Organic results - 362 visits, 1.1% conversion ration (sales to visits), value per visit: £1
Search term: Paid for results - 1,718 visits, 1.75% conversion ration (sales to visits), value per visit: £1.66
Posted by Dean
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
"What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet”
But you wouldn’t find it on Google. In the world of search, what you call your product does matter (unlike Shakespeare’s Juliet, who didn’t mind what her lover was called).
The danger of being different
We were working with a client recently who weren’t happy with their visibility on the search engines. Or rather the visibility of one of their products. Like many companies, they had worked hard to create a differentiated product and were keen to emphasise their difference with a unique product name.
Call a spade a spade
Let’s say for example they were making spades. They decided to call their new spade a “Forkblade”. So far so good. But now let’s say they wanted people to find their new product on the Internet. But on their website, while there were plenty of references to “Forkblade”, there was nothing to indicate that - however different their product was from the norm it was still – well a spade.
“You’ll find that with the spades. . .”
And even more importantly, all those people who have yet to hear about Forkblade are never going to search for a Forkblade. As far as they are concerned they are looking for a spade.
So whatever you call your product, or however creatively you choose to talk about it. If you want your targets to find it, use the words that they would use to describe it to look for one – or even look for an alternative. And make sure that this key phrase appears the right number of times on the page, and is also included in the meta data.
Posted by Chris
The danger of being different
We were working with a client recently who weren’t happy with their visibility on the search engines. Or rather the visibility of one of their products. Like many companies, they had worked hard to create a differentiated product and were keen to emphasise their difference with a unique product name.
Call a spade a spade
Let’s say for example they were making spades. They decided to call their new spade a “Forkblade”. So far so good. But now let’s say they wanted people to find their new product on the Internet. But on their website, while there were plenty of references to “Forkblade”, there was nothing to indicate that - however different their product was from the norm it was still – well a spade.
“You’ll find that with the spades. . .”
And even more importantly, all those people who have yet to hear about Forkblade are never going to search for a Forkblade. As far as they are concerned they are looking for a spade.
So whatever you call your product, or however creatively you choose to talk about it. If you want your targets to find it, use the words that they would use to describe it to look for one – or even look for an alternative. And make sure that this key phrase appears the right number of times on the page, and is also included in the meta data.
Posted by Chris
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
Relationship Marketing: How To Win Friends and Influence Voters
While us Brits watched from afar at the unwinding of the US election and Obama's epic victory, most of us were blissfully unaware of the extent of his campaign to engage with the American public. As well as the traditional 30-second ad clips and piles of mail through front doors, Obama's team clearly had a more focused and progressive strategy in mind, which paid dividends (and will continue to pay dividends long into his leadership term).
Check out this article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5114836.ece
Just goes to show what careful and intelligent selection of media, comprehensive data collection and persuasive messaging can achieve. A Change indeed.
Posted by Alex
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Make Email Marketing Work: 6 Easy Rules
Hitting a larger target audience for less money seems like a bit of a no-brainer at the moment and email marketing certainly hits the nail on the head. However, as effective as it is, it's also easy to get wrong. Get it right and you can generate further sales and leads and retain client loyalty.
We believe there are 6 simple rules to making sure your campaigns deliver results.
1. Plan, Plan, Plan
Like any marketing exercise, you need to ask yourself some fundamental questions:
We believe there are 6 simple rules to making sure your campaigns deliver results.
1. Plan, Plan, Plan
Like any marketing exercise, you need to ask yourself some fundamental questions:
- Who are you talking to?
- What will they get from what they read?
- What do you want them to do?
- What happens after that?
2. Segment and Personalise
Make sure you target the right people with the right message. What have particular customers shown interest in before? What are their individual business and personal pains? Separate your database and send personalised messages that resonate with the recipients. Not only will you generate more click-throughs, you will build greater loyalty long term.
3. Get your copy, layout and messaging right
- Keep it short and simple with just enough graphics to support the message
- Address a fundamental emotional need
- Have a clear, simple and valuable offer or message
- Keep calls to action simple
- Sell the benefits of your offer or message
- Mark your click-throughs and headings clearly so recipients know how to respond and where to click
4. Use a dedicated email platform
Believe it or not, many companies still send email campaigns through Outlook. Not only does this give you absolutely no reporting on the campaign, you could get your main company domain black listed as spam.
A good system will be able to report on a plethora of details:
- Received emails
- Opened rates
- Click-through rate
- Top viewers
- Bounce rate
All this data is vital when analysing your campaigns and developing a further understanding of your customers and their behaviours. Some systems even include the facility to do a spam check, essential in maximising the potential of getting your email in the inbox.
5. Test, Test, Test
After all of the hard work, don’t simply press the send button without testing the hell out of your email. Send it to as many people as you can with as many different set ups. MAC’s, PC’s, Blackberry’s and iPhones, they all need to be considered. You also need to check your email to ensure it gets through the spam filters. Most good dedicated email platforms include a facility to check this.
6. Get your landing page right
Last, but most certainly not least, you need to get your landing page right. Just follow these simple rules to complete a great mailing:
- Make sure your page is relevant to your mailing
- Be consistent with the design and message delivered in the mailing
- Keep the page simple and uncluttered, focus the page on the campaign objective
- Where possible collect further data, again building the chance of greater relevancy on future marketing
If you follow the six steps above you are sure to see how effective email marketing can be in your marketing mix.
Good luck!
Posted by Dean
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