Marketing | Glenn Ward

[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.

An insight into why digital and viral marketing is sooooo important (in my opinion)

I continually come across people who are adverse to digital marketing! Or more the point, don’t understand the area so pretend its unimportant or not beneficial to business development or marketing strategy, this is especially the case when I mention social media or YouTube! Bit too childs play! but there is no point in putting your head in the sand when it comes to advances in technology, I know your CD collection did look good and you could see what your CD’s had at a glance blah blah blah! but now you own an iPod don’t you? All your music in your pocket, organised in any number of ways! and I bet you even tell your friends about how good it is! You know who you are! I like the feel and smell of a book as well but sorry! They’re next to go!

My point is that people consume mass media in many different ways, so the emphasis should be on content not the platform or device, although you should reach out to as many platforms and devices as possible. Whether it be your YouTube viewing or Facebook account most have an accompanying app on the phone, pad, games console, tv etc, this was just the beginning of the trend, even the most avid newspaper readers are beginning to obtain their news over an iPad, kindle, Samsung Galexy, Blackberry Playbook etc. In order to push marketing messages to our customers we need to be aware of major shifts in media consumption. Unfortunately for some of us this means learning about platforms we don’t yet understand. By identifying or creating good content that relates to our brand or product we start to see where our clients might be. All too often, the only thing someone hears when I talk on the subject is facebook or twitter and then immediately become disinterested, I am talking about a platform, it could be anything and will almost certainly be different for every industry. The major point in the social media arena is that the target has already profiled themselves, they have given you the vitals, there hobbies and interest, where they’ve been on holiday. Yes I did mention social media, sorry, I know a good portion of my readers are now thinking how does that fit into B2B? Linkedin is social media! You can can spend hours and pennies going to conferences, events networking but you also can quickly search a self generated database where employees have already stated who they work for, what their title is and what they do for the company. I agree there’s nothing better than a face to face and that’s where you make sales but in a world where we are continually improving efficiency to save time, we all manage to fill that void with something else and the fact remains that many of us don’t have the time to leave the office.

So lets make this as simple as possible and lets start at the beginning as so many people are attacking the wrong link in the chain. Here’s a short case study, not from an online store, that’s too easy! This is a case study from a job I did for a auto locksmith start up. Firstly ask yourself where are your customers? what are they doing at the time the need your product? what are their needs? A friend of mine had set up as an autolocksmith, his customers were identified as one off users of the service that often would be in an emergency situation, locked out of their car, away from home, lost keys etc. Having this information not only answered a lot of Digital Marketing questions but also design questions enabling them to channel the spend where it would be most effective. The service needed to be found quickly and on the platforms people would turn to when they needed this type of service. For the short term marketing strategy PPC campaigns were essential, the ad needed to be displayed on the first page of search engines, there was a high probability customers would be on a mobile device so the website need to load fast and display the information needed to make contact as well as the services offered. Directories would be important and test were made to see which, if any would produce a return on investment.

Ok, point made, a marketing strategy where I didn’t suggest a facebook page or any form of social media and I might add, one where offline marketing methods such as a yellow pages ad brought in no extra business.

Monitoring your B2B online marketing efforts using Custom Reporting in Google Analytics

I was recently asked to write a piece on Analytics at an intermediate level but this also ties into a stage we have arrived at with some Google AdWords training I’m doing so I’ll explain how analytics can pick up where AdWords left off and also how you can use Custom Reporting to monitor other offline and online marketing efforts.

If you are using AdWords for Business to Business advertising one issue is that data drops off at a certain point as you have no checkout and no price or profit attributed to a click which effectively means no calculation of the Return On Investment. This drop off can be picked up using Analytical software and in particular I shall talk about how we can do this with Google Analytics. The main point to note is that with an end action we can track an entire visitors journey from pre-entry to exit or call to action. With a checkout and a piece of code this purchase price is reported back to your Google Account. The replacement in a B2B case is a call to action and this might be in the form of an email link, request for proposal, click to download etc. As long as the visitor has something to click on then they can be tracked. The long winded process of tracking user journeys if you were using a limited stats package would be to look at the keyword that provided the visitor, tie in the key information that allows you to identify them at different stages of the journey and estimate whether they called to action. With Google Analytics Custom Reporting you are able to do far more. I would recommend using this to track individual marketing efforts and Goals to concentrate on more specific calls to action such as a click on an email link or download. Let’s take your social media efforts for example. You could set up a custom report that tracked all of your social media traffic, the site penetration of each and time on site ie. did they actually stay and read something.

Here’s a step by step guide to such a report,

In the example below I set up a new report, the first Metric I am concerned with is the Pages/Visits, to keep the dimension simple I chose Page Title as I will know exactly the page I am looking at. Once I have established the pages visited I would like to know site penetration so I add Page Views, I next want to establish whether they actually found this page interesting so I add Time On Page, finally I am concerned with where the user left the site so I add Exits.

After creating your report I just want to show you a little hidden extra that gives you a better overview of your traffic. When you look at the report you should see something like this.

This is fine for a top level overview but if you’re keen to delve deeper, click on the Pivot View above the top right hand corner of the table. You will be presented with a chart cross referencing traffic sources, the different Metrics are still available and you can change these with a simple dropdown menu.

You could take this one stage further and apply it to your offline marketing efforts, this is a bit of an eCommerce trick but why not publish an advert in a magazine with a unique URL, a unique landing page that could only be found had the person read the advert.

PPC – Pay Per Click Marketing and Purchase Process

Also see,
Understanding the science of PPC Digital Marketing

The other day I did an hour session on the use of Google Adwords and like most of my explanations related it back to conventional marketing practises and thinking about purchase process.

So, it is an extremely large subject and some might say its an art to perfect pay per click for a particular industry, product or brand. For more specifics on keywords and your campaigns see this article. If you break it down to it’s absolute basics and suggest some theory that could be applied to any campaign and in fact could be used to refine or revisit your existing campaign. The aim is to pick up your potential customer from an online space where you know they are specifically looking for something. Your advert should then suggest to them that you have what they are looking for, in as few steps as possible the customer will arrive in front of your product where they will find the right price and enough information to make a purchase decision. Of course it’s not that simple, product awareness often happens way before the online experience, the competing ads on the search engine may grab their attention more, they might feel you have the right price but not enough information to make an informed purchase decision or visa versa, they might research the product on your site but purchase from the cheapest vendor, they might even drop out during the checkout process. The point is that the drop out could occur at any point in the purchase process and so they are many important aspects to consider when designing your pay per click adverting and it’s not just about cleverly chosen key words and advert. You should also be looking at your SEO, landing pages, website content, price reviews, targeting, the list goes on! One is not successful without the other so think of PPC as a small part of your Digital Marketing Strategy.

I’ve written some beginners guides to SEO to here, which should also help with your landing page content.

eCommerce – Should online stores be thinking about website usability from a mobile access POV

I was asked the other day if it would be a good idea to produce a shops brochure as an iPhone App. After taking off my iPhone evangelist hat I replied objectively. More and more people are accessing the Internet in new ways but successful apps work because they allow users to quickly and easily perform a task that they would normally do or feel comfortable doing on a laptop.

So back to the question, is it really realistic that every user would install an app for each of the stores they occasionally shop? I doubt it! And although the iPhone dominates the Market they still only account for a portion and unless you are prepared to develop for blackberry, android etc you will only be reaching out to a small proportion of shoppers.

While I have never been a fan .mobi idea of developing sites specific for mobile phone browsers as mobile phones, screen aspect ratios differ across every mobile devices, with increasing devices being able to cope with full screen browsing I would be inclined to look at the build of the main site, optimise the pages for fast download and take a long hard look at the checkout.

In these early stages of online mobile development I would not rule out in investing in getting the catalogue onto mobile devices but possibly a PDF that can be opened on most smart phones with links to your recently optimised web pages is the way to go at this stage. Think about layout of the PDF, file size, usability and linking. This file will also have the added viral advantage of being emailed and viewed at leisure without an Internet connection.

Also see iPhone apps or Online apps? What is the future as new smartphones emerge?

Mobile Technology drives regular websites to use location data on their pages

I noticed the other day while looking online at the Cineworld website for local Cinemas that they had started to use location data in their web pages. I was on my iPhone and as I hit the Cinemas page the iPhone asked if it use my location. without physically entering a postcode or location the website displayed 3 closest cinemas. In this case I’m confident the website accessed the iPhones GPS hardware but as I discovered after a short Google, Geolocation browsing is just around the corner and uses IP address data to locate your position. I was quite surprised at how accurate this actually was, try Firefox Geolocation to see for yourself, also try out Google Latitude.

Despite in the example above, saving you one step in your browsing, making browsing and locating the data you need more efficient. Geolocation browsing has marketing and advertising implications. Like PPC Advertising with ability to target customers with specific advertising based on location, allowing websites to have your location data will mean the the adverts you will be presented with will be more likely to be of interest to you. From an advertisers point of view such as affiliate programs etc adverts will be served up more efficiently and improve conversion rates.

With websites such as Facebook and Browsers holding shed loads of information about you, Targeted Marketing is made easier and easier for advertisers. Already, as you browse through Facebook you will only see adverts based on your interest and keywords. Geolocation in browsers will make this more accurate and on the bright side, advertising won’t be so imposing on users as they surf the Internet. What’s next? instead of analysing your traffics data after they have visited you site, could you inteligently assess users as the page loads and dynamically serve up your pages based on their profile?

Also see post on Analytical Software.

Integrating Online Video into your Digital Marketing Strategy

Also see,
Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation
Beyond SEO – The right traffic to your site
An Introduction to Google Webmaster Tools
Introduction to Google Analytics and other website analytical tools
Introduction to Pay Per Click Campaigns
PPC Pay Per Click Marketing and purchase process
Integrating online video into your digital marketing strategy

Everyone is banging on about the power of video and how companies can use it in deliverables, and as part of their Marketing collateral and I agree, it is a powerful tool, without it I would be jobless, but before you start to plan your next epic, pause to think about it’s delivery and the cost implications of this.

I have spent a year now developing a video service in a company and to some extent an industry that until recently could not see how video could benefit the product. The main issue has not been producing the video or encouraging execs to come up with new ways in which to use video, it has been the means of delivery. Like any digital marketing there is absolutely no point in producing something that is not viewed by a high volume of people and more importantly, performs a function. Similarly to the everyone creating a Facebook page merely because they can mentality, putting video out there and doing it badly has the adverse effect on proving your understanding of the landscape and damages the brand rather than enhances it.

So what are your options? Well of course you can invest in a bespoke video delivery platform, buy something off the shelf that meets the companies needs but this is large initial step and a large spend, especially if you have not been involved in video in the past. Much like eBay is no longer an online garage sale, blogs are no children’s online diaries, Youtube is definitely not an online repository for unprofessional home videos, in fact Youtube is now one of the largest online search engines and any digital marketer cannot ignore this.

So how do you make it work for your product? Well, while you cannot set out to make a viral video, you can maximise the exposure you receive from your production by setting clear objectives and planning far beyond that of uploading your one video to an account on YouTube and hoping people might come across it. My biggest rule is allowing people to decide upon their own browsing habits. Don’t dictate to them how they should arrive at your product because you’ll loose them at the first awkward click routine or navigation that takes more than a few seconds of their time. Although many of the online spaces provide a quick and easy means of providing link building to your website, pay every one due attention, think about the usability issues and make sure there are no awkward, dead or complicated links to your pages. Don’t presume that a person will take the time to navigate to the correct page on your site if you dump them on your homepage. More often than not they won’t complete this part of the journey.

So, back to video. Take time producing your online space whether it be on YouTube, Vimeo etc. Remember that just uploading it is not enough, promote your video with appropriate means, social media, press releases, email marketing etc. If you have produced your video well and it does the job then send the user to the relevant page on your site and to your product.

If you are in doubt about your video, usability or quality of the landing page then don’t do it! Unfortunately it’s far easier to damage a brand than it is to build it.

Understanding the science of PPC digital marketing – Make Pay Per Click work for your business

Also see,
Pay per click marketing and purchase process

I’m often approached for some pointers in the area of Pay Per Click advertising and I start by explaining how varied the subject can be. I often read Googles guides, and other readings but don’t reach the end a whole lot wiser as every industry, every product even time of day, week or the weather effects a large campaign. I have decided my new advise approach should therefore be, how to not get PPC Marketing or advertising wrong rather than how to get it right.

So, where to begin? Let’s start with the setting up of the campaign as this is where you will begin. A common mistake from the outset is to follow all of Googles recommendations and have your advert appear for every associated word that refers to your product. It is good to think of every combination of words your customer might search but be careful not to include to broader terms especially if you do not stock the full range yourself. A brand that has a huge product portfolio will generate traffic but if you pull traffic through for broad terms there is no guarantee you will have to specific product at the specific price your potential customer is looking for. Broad terms often result in a low conversion rate. Having said this in an uncompetitive market this will be another story.

Ok, we’ve targeted our specific customer looking for a specific brand and a specific product in that brand range, the next thing they see is our advert on the right hand side / top of the search engine. All too often retailers go for a catch all advert for their entire campaign. This poses two problems, firstly, most customers want to know at the search engine stage if the retailer has the product and so this approach might lead to no click at all if a competitors advert supplies the required data. Secondly the customer clicks on your advert unsure as to what they might find, browses your site for a short while and then leaves, resulting in low conversion rates and a high spend. The odd wasted click here and there may seem insignificant on a small account but I have handled accounts from between a £500 to £2000 weekly spend, if these clicks aren’t turning into sales then you will soon be running at a loss.

Usability doesn’t just become important when the potential customer reaches your site, you are dealing with a savvy shopper that doesn’t wish to continue searching once on your website. You have used the right keywords, captured them with a good advert now clinch the sale by presenting them on a landing page with the product they’re after and at a competitive price.

Rather than just looking to the Google keyword tool as this will bombard you with every possible combination of key words know to man (well computer) you should use webmaster tools, google analytics and other 3rd party sites or tools to influence your choice of keywords. More detail on these in a later post.

All of the above should be done with measured targets in mind. Without bench marks there is no guarantee you are achieving a good ROI. I always stand by that PPC marketing is a short term fix and that the foe the bulk of the advertising or sales should not rely on PPC Campaigns. Your Pay Per Click should run alongside your SEO campaigns and other digital marketing, targets and goals should be set that work in synergy with a view to improve organic search conversions and digital marketing with a higher ROI. Remember some of the most innovative digital marketing costs virtually nothing.

If you have a large AdWords spend be sure to make use of your Google account manager, they are only at the other end of the phone and will work with you to improve your campaign. Be sure to provide a clear brief and if you doubt that they completely understand you brand do not ask them to make ad hoc adjustments to the wording of ads. They are extremely useful for performing repetitive time consuming jobs. Alternatively you can speed up your editing by using tools such as Google AdWords Editor, you can have more control over your adverts and if you are a whizz with exel can export and import files allowing you to work in a more familiar format.

Just a taster for now! But do ask more specific questions and I shall rage on additional posts.

What I learn’t about QR Codes, their success in Japan and their business application

Back in July 2008 a friend of mine, Joel returned from Japan. Knowing me he thought I’d be very interested in a breaking technology in Japan. Everywhere he went he said he saw little square barcodes and more importantly people pointing their phones at them. I quickly hit the Internet and discovered they were QR codes or Quick Response Codes, the codes were originally produced to monitor stock control on automotive production lines but given the recent technological breakthroughs of mobile phone hardware and the ability to manipulate this hardware with customisable software the code readers found their way onto your devices. In Japan QR readers are one of the most widely used applications on a mobile phones (here’s some stats) and have been embraced by businesses. So, what Are their uses and how are they being used? Well, following the success on tiny URL’s we see a need to fit into limited fields large amounts of information and QR Codes provide this without the need for a database of stored information or a connection to the Internet to decider a code, it’s all there stored in the code. Fortunately, unlike many software revelations the concept has been governed from the start to avoid deviation from the theory, read more on Wikipedia. This means that (in theory) although their a couple of different types of code, the reader you decide to install on your phone should read any code and their are plenty of tools to create your codes both on the Internet and on your phone / mobile device.

The function of the QR Code is to store large amounts of information in a small space. Much like tiny URL’s didn’t make much sense to us until the popular acceptance of micro blogging QR will probably not make much sense until industry shows us the application for real. Where this concept excels is the ability to automatically call a function on the phone, in times where we are continually trying to streamline our lives this really does pay dividends.

Functionality
The QR Code can automatically open your browser at a web page, open a pre filled text message with respondent ready for your to hit send, it can pass contact information including phone numbers, email addresses etc to your phone and place them directly in the address book. Like many innovations we are in a catch 22 situation without big companies swing the benefit to there use and investing in it users will not install the software and with limited downloads of the software business fails to see the ROI. So, outside of the box, what possible applications do we see. Again, like I always say, the greatest power comes from a combination of technologies. On a basic level, imagine you are at a bus stop and you see a poster for a movie you want to see. You scan the barcode which automatically launches your browser on your phone, a simple HTML page loads and you are asked if it can access you current location using the phones built in GPS, you are forwarded to another page and within a matter of seconds you know where the local cinema is, the showings and price, you could even request directions to see google maps launch and take you there. Of course this has advertising implications and data collection. You are reading the local paper and see an advert in the classifieds, rather than be restricted by the 60 words that will fit onto the given space, you scan a QR Code and navigate directly to more information and possible images of the goods, or even better directly to the sellers eBay advert where you can follow the transaction through to the point of sale. Again offering marketing opportunities and the monitoring of consumer habits. Final example as I don’t give away all of my ideas, your retail packaging is cluttered with nutritional information, health and safety advise and you are missing you marketing message through lack of space, a simple barcode might solve this problem, allow consumer to record what the look at, compare prices and much more. This requires far more than outside the box thinking to reach it’s full potential but hopefully I am getting that across.

QR + Existing technologies = A very powerful tool

So how does it work? the squares within the image allow the device to read it in 3D space meaning it is not required to be flat, software calculates the trim and tilt and works out what the square image should look like. The code must conform so that it can be read across readers, this also means that developers have the opportunity to exploit the concept, creating their own codes and not relying on a few software suppliers.

Devices
I first tested the software on a HTC Touch Diamond with great results, no need to take a photo and then analyse it, it automatically handled the code when it saw the image. The iPhone App store has recently seen the arrival of QR Code readers although many require you to take a picture first then ask it to be read.

Software Application
NeoReader
Kaywa Reader
QuickMark Mobile Barcode
zxing
…and more popping up on the iTunes store

Create your codes
Kaywa