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Know your digital marketing

Friday, December 17th, 2010

Digital marketing
The future of marketing is undeniably digital – as other marketing and advertising budgets are hit by economic dips, digital marketing shows a continually healthy growth.

We’re also discovering new trends around digital marketing every day; for example, we’re seeing that the old rules based around ratecards and readership are fast becoming obsolete. In cyberspace, the only thing that counts is your imagination – and your grasp of technology. The bread and butter of digital advertising is the banner, or display advert. There are three ways of paying for your banner: per page impression, per click or per action – such as a sale or brochure order. In our opinion banner adverts should be given a wide-birth. Most consumers are banner-blind. Eyeball tracking tests by legendary internet marketer Jakob Nielsen do indeed suggest that surfers rarely glance at banner adverts. The problem with banner advertising comes when defining reach, even worse if you’re paying by ‘potential’ viewers. The issue is that reach is a number born out of the television advertising ere where there was a limited spectrum. As a result, people were forced to watch one of a small number of channels. The internet doesn’t live by the same rules because the digital spectrum is infinite. As an advertiser who should always be seeking maximum impact, you can extract much more value by offering a specific message to a small group, rather than a general message to a large one. So the real value on the internet becomes the ability to segment and target, rather than a ‘broad-brush’ approach, with a hope to reach massive numbers.

Social sites
If boring banner adverts don’t float your boat there are other options, some more established than others. Social media sites offer dozens of possibilities, not forgetting to mention your ability to get quality backlinks.

Wikipedia is a must. More than one in 200 visits on the entire internet are to Wikipedia, so make sure your company’s page is up to scratch. LinkedIn has also recently expanded the company pages section to enable you to upload specific products and services and get real-time recommendations from within your network.

In-game adverts, mobiles, barcodes
In-game advertising is one of the newest forms of digital marketing. If you play ‘Pro Evolution Soccer’ on a PlayStation, you’ll see adverts around the animated pitch for Reebok, Canon and the Daily Mirror.

Mobile marketing is booming too. The Sun has now added the word ‘mobile’ into its strapline – ‘Paper, online, mobile’ – and has agreed to show Premier League goal clips on its mobile site for 50p a time

Barcodes
Barcodes are the latest development. Marketers can text a barcode to smartphones, which are then scanned by laser readers. Supermarkets accept mobile barcodes instead of paper discount vouchers.

Blogging
If these new technologies seem daunting – and expensive – then try the most frugal form of communication: a blog. OK, so there are 106 million blogs in cyberspace, but a good blog can create an emotional tie between your brand and the consumer and certainly helps your SEO rankings.

Also, forum posting can be effective. We post regularly to UKbusinessForums.co.uk – the busiest entrepreneur-focused site in the UK. Phil Williams, founder of Open Mind Commerce, says he gets 90 per cent of new leads by answering queries on UKbusinessforums.co.uk site alone. Whatever digital marketing strategies you choose: – know them, understand them and keep your eyes open as new technologies are developed every month.

Tags: digital marketing, direct marketing
Posted in Emerging Themes, Internet Marketing | No Comments »

Professional services marketing

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Secure new clients
Professional services marketing was previously referred to as the “slow starter” in marketing circles. However, partners and owners in accountancies, management consultancies and law firms are now learning from the FMCG business-to-consumer arena in order to secure new clients.

Differentiate yourself from your competitors

The market now wants to know why to choose firm A over firm B – accelerated by the recession. In the “good old days” work was flowing in, now the credit crunch has forced those in the professional services sectors, who have previously ignored marketing, to differentiate themselves to obtain a competitive advantage.

Professional Services marketing is close to our heart. We understand the technicalities and delicateness of your business and have been involved with “discretely” building awareness and promoting the services of our clients in the past.

We understand that professional services marketing wont ever be the same as B2C marketing and we remain serious about our work, because are clients work is serious…

Which is why you will not hear us shout about our successes in these sectors, remaining sophisticated and well integrated that you will be hard pushed to actually distinguish our activities as marketing (more like business development).

Tags: business development, law firms, management consultancies, professional services marketing
Posted in Emerging Themes, Marketing | No Comments »

Triple Bottom line

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

By Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

Now that our economy’s been stripped back to basics and we’re starting to move out of recession, I’ve been wondering, what will be left in its place and also, what will move to top of agenda for the future?

Triple Bottom Line is something that I feel is worth mentioning here. There was a shift towards sustainable practices prior to the recession, this has sort of taken a back seat whilst everyone’s priority jumped to survival; but we’re moving out of that period and there’s certainly evidence of an increase in awareness for sustainability. That said, few companies’ have a strategy for sustainability, or even a stance on how they think about sustainable practices.

Image courtesy of Poppy Dots Crafts

The triple bottom line – economic, social and environment – is a very practical method that’s gaining momentum for companies who want to become more actively involved with sustainability; more so to SME organisations. Rather than just focus on environmental issues, triple bottom line (TBL) understands that businesses have a responsibility to be financially viable and to turn a profit. Therefore, TBL considers the financial bottom line which is vital to the long term growth and economic success, along with social and environment responsibilities.

I see this change (2nd order) coming as a result of the recessions and it will be driven by consumers and stakeholders. Similar to what happened in the consumer markets with Organic and Fair-trade; food producers have adjusted their sustainability policies as result of consumer pressure. My prediction is that sustainability will begin to move up the value chain into the business markets.

So, what do we need to do about this? Well, the extent of this will be first seen by your field representatives such as; marketers and sales people in customer facing roles. It’s these people who’ll be able to gauge the response of your customers, see how they’re planning their sustainable practices and then use that knowledge to inform and influence the future decision of your company.

Some business owners would argue that business is business and not their place to consider sustainability issues. However, this view will simply not stack up any longer. If steps are not taken to make all businesses more sustainable, then there won’t be a business future at all.

This week sees ASDA criticised for sustainability performance and ranked the least green of the 5 big supermarkets. It will be interesting to see how consumers react to this news.

Reference;
CIM, (2007) Shaping the Agenda. Triple Bottom Line.

Tags: Business to Business, marketing, new marketing, technological changes
Posted in Emerging Themes | 1 Comment »

Black sheep of e-marketing

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

By Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

Social media is the black sheep of the e-marketing family, falling behind pay-per-click and email marketing in the minds of most marketers, but we predict that this is all set to change.

black-sheep

Generally, businesses are just wakening up to what social media can do and how it should be treated. Currently used as a fun way to immerse users in brands, rather than as a tool for direct selling. Innocent drinks and Compare the Market are two companies that have got it right. Both have used Twitter to great effect, with funny and engaging feeds that are ‘on brand’ and don’t do the hard sell.

With the onset of more open source programs and widgets that do almost everything imaginable through the interface of a browser, social media is no longer the finger-in-the-air medium it used to be.

We’ve started using blogs at Studiowide (you’re reading one right now!) and our target is to raise our profile as a leading marketing company in Liverpool. The posts that we make are replicated over the web through news feeds and also on twitter. This gives our followers and customers the opportunity to publically engage with us on their terms with comments and feedback. Ultimately, this level of activity is rewarded by Google who like content publishers.

Social media is moving at speed so it’s vital that you get to grips with new developments; a word of caution though; try first before you jump, see which one’s works for you and which ones don’t.

Tags: Business to Business, Customer Relationship Management, e-marketing, marketing, new marketing, online, technological changes
Posted in Emerging Themes, Marketing | 2 Comments »