Digital marketing – The rules of online branding

I have recently been working on a concept with a friend of mine and an agency I have commissioned. Always is the way that you are asked for a brand name and logo at the beginning of the project but I have come to find that this is completely the wrong approach. Your online branding is far more than a name and a flashy logo and it can and often will make or break your online business, maybe not straight away but in the long run!

I did some research and here are some rules I identified that you should consider in their entirety or as close to as possible;

Brand name

  • Keep it simple, 2 syllables if possible
  • Be memorable, out of mind means a competitor will get your traffic
  • Repetitive naming, words that sound repetitive are more memorable
  • Obvious spelling, if your user has to question the spelling then you have lost half your users
  • Don’t be too niche, do not segment your audience before you even begin
  • Try to reflect the function and industry, for obvious reason, its the first opportunity to communicate a message.
  • Do not mirror your offline online, these are 2 separate arenas and seldom can you just take an offline brand online
  • Coin a term, your online brand should work as a verb. “Just eBay it” “I’ll Goggle that later!”

Like you should write your summary to your business plan after writing the plan you should not jump the gun on your branding.

Watch this space to see if I applied this to my own business venture.

We concepted and developed gfk.com entirely using Microsoft Sharepoint

Firstly sorry for my lack of blogging this past year although I see the blog traffic remains constant.

I have been busy, really busy! at the beginning of the year I was asked to lead the conception and rollout of the companies global website and digital marketing strategy. The chosen platform and for development was microsoft sharepoint. A strange choice for a content management system but also going on in conjuction to the internet project was the development of our intranet and client portal. All 3 work streams worked closely together over a 10 month period and produced some great content sharing mechanisms that unfortunately you will never see as they are under the hood. We are still in development and there’s a whole load more to come as we are rolling out in over 50 countries.

I really wanted to shout about this development as I have not seen a sharepoint website to match this standard of build by an internal development team. And we also in the process of aligning our entire digital comms structure to allow for even more great content pulling and sharing to and from the website.

So take a look and I would love to know your thoughts?

GfK Sharepoint website

GfK .com

GfK Insights Blog

GfK Insights Blog

ISO country and language codes for url planning

For anyone that might need to do some country and language URL planning this might save you some time. I could not find it all in one place!

Country Country code English 2nd lang. ISO Language code What apple do
Global x
Brazil BR (Brazilian) Portugese PT Brazilian Portugese
China CN Chinese ZH Chinese
Germany DE German DE German
UK UK x EN English
USA US x EN English
Canada CA x French FR EN /French
France FR French FR French
Japan JP Japanese JA Japanise
Italy IT Italian IT Italian
Spain ES Spanish ES Spanish
Australia AU x EN English
Mexico MX Spanish ES Spanish
Sweden SE x Swedish SV Swedish
Netherlands NL Dutch NL Dutch
South Korea KR Korean KO
Russia RU Russian RU Russian
Poland PL Polish PL Polish
South Africa ZA x EN English
Belgium BE French FR Dutch or German and French
India IN x English
Switzerland CH German DE German & French
Austria AT German DE English
Denmark DK Danish DA Danish
Norway NO Norwegian NO Norwegian
Turkey TR Turkish TR Turkish
Colombia CO Spanish ES Spanish
Thailand TH x Thai TH English
Finland FI x Finnish FI Finish
Czech Republic CZ Czech CS Czech
Argentina AR Spanish ES Spanish
Chile CL Spanish ES Spanish
Indonesia ID Indonesian IN English
Hong Kong HK x English
Greece GR x Greek EL Greek
Venezuela VE Spanish ES Spanish
Malaysia MY x Malaisian English
Taiwan TW Taiwanese ZH Not listed
Portugal PT Portugese PT Portugese
Ireland IE x English
New Zealand NZ x English
Philippines PH x ?? English
Hungary HU Hungarian HU Hungarian
Singapore SG Chinese ZH English
Israel IL x Hebrew HE English
Peru PE Spanish ES Spanish
Romania RO Romanian RO Romanian
Vietnam VN x Vietnamese VI English
Egypt EG Arabic AR English
Ukraine UA Russian RU Ukrainian
Bulgaria BG Bulgarian BG Bulgarian
Kenya KE x English
Slovakia SK Slovakian SK Slovakian
Nigeria NG x English
Croatia HR Croatian HR Croatian
Iran IR Persian Not listed
Slovenia SL Slovenian SL Slovenian
Lithuania LT x Lithuanian
Pakistan PK x Not listed
Estonia EE x Estonian
Latvia LV x Latvian
Uruguay UY Spanish ES Spanish
Costa Rica CR Spanish ES Spanish
Bangla Desh BD Bengali Not listed
Guatemala GT Spanish ES Spanish
Luxembourg LU French FR English
Panama PA x Spanish ES Spanish
Bolivia BO Spanish ES Spanish
El Salvador SV Spanish ES Spanish
Lebanon LB Arabic AR Not listed
Paraguay PY Spanish ES Spanish
Georgia GE Russia RU Not listed
Cyprus CY Greek Not listed
Sri Lanka LK ? Not listed
Cambodia KH Cambodian Not listed
Myanmar MM ? Not listed
Nicuragua Spanish ES Spanish
Laos x ? Not listed
Albania AL Albanian SQ Not listed
Bosnia Herzegowine BA x Bosnian Not listed
Kazakhstan KZ Russian RU Not listed
Macedonia MK Macedonian MK English
Serbia RS Serbian SR Not listed
Malta MT x Not listed
Ecuador EC Spanish ES Spanish
UAE x English
Bahrain BH x English
Algeria DZ French FR Not listed
Morocco MA French FR French
Oman OM x English
Saudi Arabia SA x English
Sudan SD x not listed
Senegal SN x French
Syria SY x not listed
Tunesia TN French French
Tanzania TZ x Not listed
Uganda UG x English
Yemen YE x
Mozambique MZ Portuguese English
OTHER ASIA English
LATIN AMERICA EN English
LATIN AMERICA ES Spanish

Your website doesn’t need to be a passive online brochure

Your website doesnt need to be a passive online brochure, activate it! Make it an engaging communication platform that captures search and viral traffic, building readership through content marketing, social media and digital marketing.

Many websites are still currently used as a brochure online. As a business card does not produce leads without the networking and basic communication a website does not function without understanding your clients purchase cycle and interrupting it in a non obtrusive manor. It’s active marketing that really makes a well designed and user friendly website work, but there needs to be joined up thinking amongst your organization and the success of this traffic funneling needs to be monitored.

This is often near impossible with our current structures, resources and skill sets but the future is bright…
You most probably produce good content! and this can be repurposed in many ways. Beyond questions like, What should this email look like? What are the key messages? are questions like, How do I get my content in front of potential clients? Where do I want the reader to end up? how can my content become viral? What do I want people to be talking about when they read my content?

Like Pay Per Advertising allows you to only spend on the potential customer, essentially asking them if the are interested in your product before handing them a business card. We can identify where client conversations are taking place and effectively interject into the conversation with compelling content, allowing that conversation to carry our Marketing messages with the potential to become viral. If you are able identify just a few of your enthusiasts and reach out to them by email, a press release, blog post etc these few, potentially become our Brand Advocates and effectively, do our marketing for us, inputting on our behalf into other online conversations.

Heres an example,
10 years ago you might go to debate, speakers debate, the audience listens, there is a Q and A at the end. Add just one Social Media platform Twitter. Using a hashtag for example #CompanyDebate allows for a silent conversation to exist within the audience while the debate goes on. By searching this hashtag on Twitter, we see a stream of discussions and posts. This stream is a commentary for those who couldnt attend and allows for outsiders to input into the conversation, this might even allow for outsiders to pose questions in the Q and A without even being in the room. This concept can apply to events, webinars and much more, merging offline with online marketing.

But the chain must be complete – Identify clients, initiate conversations with them then put them in front of a product or service, provide a seamless call to action and generate a lead. There are many ways to do this, Search Marketing, Content Marketing, SM Marketing but the basic purchase funnel always remains the same.

Online marketing works by creating a sense of community. No longer pushing messages but participating in a conversation about the brand. Share, Like, Bookmark, Tweet allows push marketing to be less invasive as the brand is not doing the pushing but it is essential that we control our content and effectively link our online universe with the real world.

Getting your Google Analytics Custom Reports set up

There are a few things to remember to help you get set up with your Google Analytics Custom Reports. The set up interface looks confusing so first firmly establish what blocks does what, see the screen shot below.

  • The Dimensions refer to what will be the rows of the table
  • Metrics will be columns
  • Sub dimensions drill down on dimensions, for example if your dimensions is a city then your create a sub dimension to drill down referal sources from that city.

Setting up a custom report

First establish your objectives. Let’s use an example whereby we want the focus on results per landing page. make the Dimension “Landing Page” and the Metric “Visits” this will highlight number of visits by landing page. As per the example above we might want to monitor a particular marketing campaign for a certain sub domain or url. In this case add the Sub Dimension as “Referal Path” under traffic sources. This will allow you to quickly see where your traffic came from for each landing page. Your Custom report build will look like this,

 Google Analytics custom report filled

[FITNESS] Roger Wards Christmas off road fun run around Glen Parva

Roger WardYesterday the family pulled together to help dad (Roger Ward) marshal his first organized run around rural Glen Parva. The run started at Glenhills memorial hall and lead off across the fields at the back of Glen Parva making use of some great running locations along the great central way and popular dog walking tracks by the canal. It was a figure of 8 course over 3 km with a water station at the interchange for a water break on the outbound and inbound route.

That evening we decided to introduce dad to the online world and set him up with a blog to tell you all about his events, classes and health tips.

Visit Roger Ward health and fitness here to find out more and see the route from the run.

The GfK Insights Calendar – Crambed full of Insights, Infographics, Animations and Research Findings

GfK Insights Calendar

This year we have produced calendar review of the last year. It’s packed full of all the Infographics, Animated Videos and Charts we have been producing to support our PR and blog outputs. Have a browse and feel share the Insights.

We now have expanded the in house video production team with the addition of a motion graphics and 3D specialist so there’s some really exciting visuals and client deliverables just around the corner, all in a whole new league than any of our competitors.

There will be plenty more to come next year so watch this space.

 

[Marketing] Action Anticipation in the Client Purchase Process

This is going to be a bit of a different post as its not based on any reading or theory I have come across.

In this age where any Tom can create a Facebook page, Twitter handle or publish a YouTube video and call it marketing I spend more time encouraging colleagues to question their action. These are a few guide questions I often get them to ask.

  • Does this platform fit in with your brand and brand positioning?
  • Do you have a voice or from who’s point of view will the content be written?
  • Where are your clients / potential clients?
  • Do you have the resource to maintain these spaces?
  • Do you have the content to populate the space?
  • How will you maintain the quality of output and how much extra time will this add?
  • Social media is also a communication platform, are you able to react to these communications and monitor them?
  • In the early stages any online effort will only be seen by the people you tell, do you have the time to promote through offline and other online methods?

But this post is about another layer! For those who have decided that this is the correct medium to go to market. We should all be aware of purchase process and if not this should be pre requisite understanding to your marketing at some level. By understanding your targets purchase process you can map out Action Anticipation (I made that up) and this is the bit we usually forget. Sure you’ll hear people about number of followers or likes being a KPI, it is if your original objective is to gain readership but I’m pretty your MD is more concerned with whether one of those readers requested a proposal or actually bought something. So revisit your business or marketing strategy, what are your objectives?

By filling in the gaps in your potential clients purchase process you heighten the chances of meeting your objectives and satisfying a more tangible KPI that can be tracked by analytics such as number of RFPs or number of sales. If you are to be taken seriously as a social media marketer this is the language you should be talking.

Take something simpler to track like PPC advertising. Client searches client reads ad at this point you don’t want as many clicks as possible, if anything you want to put off the person who doesn’t require your product or service. client arrives on site (still not got them) what on that page sets you apart from the competition? Why should they call to action? You are not a brochure anymore! Your client is looking for more.

Apply this Action Anticipation next time you tweet something that is essentially a marketing message. What will the reader do next? if you manage to get them to your site, what will they do next? If you entice them with a free download, what will they do next? Missing a link, incentive, contact etc breaks the chain in the purchase process.

If you apply this mentality you are moving towards using the words social media in the same sentence as ROI. If not, keep measuring by readership and your social media marketing strategy will keep performing exceedingly well.