brand marketing blog

The introduction by Twitter of a geographic location feature into their platform has added some valuable social network marketing capability. One of the downsides of Twitter for local marketers is that you tend to develop a wide geographic following, which can be a blessing or a curse.

It’s great if you’re looking for global reach but for most organisations participating in social networking, the extended reach is wasted. What most of us want is to connect and interact with local organisations that could potentially make use of our services or buy our products.

At a macro level, the Twitter geolocation feature is part of the natural course of refining and targeting our markets that will continue to develop across all social media platforms. There’s no black magic here – it’s just basic marketing 101. Define your target market and forget about the rest.

Unfortunately, a lot of marketers (even those well versed in marketing 101) seem to lose sight of the basics of strategy when operating online. The fundamentals are not all that different, it’s just a new platform. It’s the same as when we moved from radio advertising to television and from letters to email.

Despite the positive spin that traditional media owners have tried to put on the state of offline advertising, the facts are stacking up that tell a different and depressing story for them.

An article in today’s NZ Herald reports that all Television NZ programmes will be up for constant review as the state broadcaster faces tighter budgets and falling advertising revenue.

Figures released yesterday show TVNZ's profit halved to $8.9 million in the six months to December, compared with the $18.3 million of the previous year. Total operating revenue fell 16.6% to $186.9 million.

Revenue from advertising was $152 million, a fall of $22 million or 12.7% on the previous year. TVNZ states that website-driven revenue is important for the broadcaster's future, with online advertising revenues up 174% from the previous year.

This mirrors the worldwide trend in the shift to online as a major player in the fight for advertiser’s dollars. Whilst online advertising is still a relatively small segment compared to traditional media, its rampant growth would indicate that it’s only a matter of when, not if it overtakes offline advertising.

One of the big plusses of online advertising and marketing is that it’s so objectively measurable, and without having to rely on questionable focus groups and expensive research reports.

With a bit of time, energy and skill, any online advertiser can track virtually every interaction that their message has with the target market, allowing for more realistic campaign performance evaluation.

Until recently, the uptake of Twitter amongst people 24 and younger has been rather muted. Statistics bear this out, as do my 16 year old daughter and 18 year old son who scoff at Twitter.

But over the past six months since around May 2009 there has been a marked increase in uptake by this age group. According to comScore Media Metrix (US), at the end of 2008, about 20% of Twitter visitors were in this group, however by the end of 2009 this group accounted for more than 30% of Twitter's visitors.

The following chart illustrates the accelerated uptake from around May 2009 onwards, outstripping uptake by adults. In fact, all age demos from 25 upwards have lost numbers, with the trend accelerating as the age gets higher.



I wonder whether the uptake by the <25 set is simply part of the delayed uptake lifecycle, and that the decrease by the older group is a sign of a waning in perceived value in Twitter by users, or the natural result of moving through the adoption and lifecycle curve at lightening speed.

I’d love to hear your views on this subject.

Guest post by Maria Carlton
www.mariacarlton.com

You can learn a lot from the movies. I don’t just mean that some are full of educational material about history or world events, I’m talking about how they are marketed.

Let’s say a new Peter Jackson movie is being released next month. First you’ll have heard about it being signed up, then there’ll be a buzz in the media about who’s been picked to play the lead roles, then we hear about a few wee scandals - cast members divorcing, hooking up, falling over in the street - another buzz on the entertainment news that filming has wrapped up and now it’s being edited, and before long we’ll start to see previews of it – several months ahead of release.

Finally, as the long awaited movie nears its red carpet moments there will be interviews of the cast, news about the cast members divorcing, hooking up, falling over in the street (again), and then the big day arrives, the reviews are written up in the papers and tweeted all over the internet, and we all trot along to see for ourselves what the reviewers were on about.

That’s quite a lead up isn’t it! Well, marketing can – and should – be like that.

Never should it be just a matter of throwing a few adverts together, there has to be a strategy. A plan for which media you’ll use; what people are saying about it, how to turn the media on to the product, and client reviews. You need to know in advance exactly what the reviews will hint at to pique the market’s interest, and what the early adopters will do once they’ve had a good look at it.

This planning also has to include an online strategy. Because your target market is most likely to be a combination of audial, visual, and kinaesthetic people who need to hear, see and experience what you are promoting. For the best interactive experience, that means becoming involved in the marketing via internet and/or text messaging. When people have to do something to get excited about a new release and they flock to their phones and laptops to take part in a competition or review process, this leads to a feeling of ownership in the campaign that radio, tv and print media can’t compete with.

So, you may be launching a new seminar or training programme. You’d start with identifying your best target market of course, and finding that this is 25-45 year old office workers, start talking about the uniqueness of the programme in a couple of trade or business journals, interview the presenter(s), and get their tribes talking about it. Have that interview broadcast via viral marketing to get as many people as possible aware of the programme’s pending release. Then you’d create a Facebook page with regularly updated information about the pending release, links to other relative programmes and ‘build a case’ for the new one via blogs and podcasts.

Once you’ve got a bit of a hum starting up this way, you build on it and tweet out a ‘countdown’ to release day, and combine that with an online competition. By the time release day comes, you have people wanting to know more about the programme, the people involved, comparisons to the competitive programmes on the market, and starting to write their own reviews – good ones – that are tweeted out further and further. Combine this with posters in relevant places and reviews in magazines, and you can potentially keep the buzz going for quite some time.

You can do this with any product, any service, any time. You just have to plan to be omnipresent where your target market are wandering about. It’s a matter of hitting every wall, talking in every corner and spreading the word in as many places as you can and sustaining that activity for as long as you can. The best part is that some of your online marketing can be done at a very low or even no cost rate – and it’s well worth considering what you’ll save by using Facebook and Twitter and investing in a good online marketing strategist to really give your campaign a turbo boost.

The way marketing is done is changing and improving – and working with people who know how the mix works well together is increasingly important for achieving maximum results within any budget. I don’t believe that Peter Jackson would overlook the importance of getting the mix right for one of his movies – do you?

One of the key factors in creating a powerful online presence and an effective search marketing programme, is to generate good quality indexable content. Some of the most popular methods of creating keyword targeted content are articles, web pages and blogs.

According to a HubSpot study, small businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors than those that don’t. This dynamic has been borne out by our own experience with our Brand Marketing Blog. Traffic to our site has increased four-fold, with a marked increase in our exposure for selected keywords in Google SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

If you have a reasonable long list of keywords or phrases that you want to be found for in Google, it’s quite a challenge to develop enough web pages under your main and sub-menu structure without being repetitive.

A blog is a great platform for a more informal style of content and it allows you to create a wide range of targeted content without bloating your website. HubSpot also reports that an active blog generates 6.9 times more organic search engine traffic than non-blogging sites.

Note: Organic search traffic is activity generated through normal Google search and excludes ‘paid-for’ traffic from AdWords or any other PPC means).

There is no hard and fast rule dictating how frequently you should post on your blog, but it’s fair to say that the more regularly you post, the quicker your site will start to generate additional traffic.

Just don’t forget that the value of a blog is to create content that is valuable, relevant and meaningful to readers. Generating rubbish won’t help your search engine marketing efforts at all.

Guest post by Damon Marshall, Senior Web Designer, at Bold Horizon

It's time to wake up folks. If your website is still designed to fit a 800 x 600 screen and has a style sheet that is only as long as your tooth, your online marketing strategy (if any) is in serious jeopardy.

It's time to get Web 2.0+

If you don't know what I'm talking about, compare the before and after example below:

Would you believe it? These two websites are almost exactly the same! Same client, same brand, same content, same functionality.  The only difference  (other than a pep-up with a few essential modern day Social Media tools),  is the vastly improved, up-to-date, twenty-ten design, look and feel.

If your website seems a little introverted, it may be time to talk to your web site designer about expressing your brand in a more positive manner. Take a surf around, see what's out there. Show your designer what you really like. Take special care though, be a believer of - FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION, in this case the function is a decent on-line marketing strategy. Combine this with a well thought out purpose for your website, managed in the hands of a credible web or graphic designer - the form should just fall into place.

Just 2 or 3 years ago you mave have spent tens of thousands of dollars on a great new website and now it's being suggested it's time for an upgrade already? Well, you may be constantly doing the same with your wardrobe. There are good reasons for this: time, trends, fashion and "something new and better that's really going to add value". Well the same applies to your online presence.

Seriously, there would be nothing worse than someone finding your website through an organic search, but moving on after a single 5-second page view because of lack of visual appeal, poor navigation, bad layout and boring content on the page.

Guest post by Damon Marshall - Senior web designer, Bold Horizon.

Are you an avid blogger in the brand marketing or social media space?

If you have something constructive, interesting and informative to contribute, then we’d be keen to publish your work in a guest post. The essence of our blog is around brand marketing in all of its incarnations – social media, search engine optimisation, email marketing, advertising, strategy etc.

We just have a couple of basic requirements:

- It must be your own original work i.e. not paraphrased or copied from anyone else

- We require exclusivity for your guest post (we don’t want to get penalsied for duplicate content)

- Acceptance and publishing of your guest post is at our discretion

If you’re keen to contribute, we will give you a full credit.

Please email your guest post to wayne@boldhorizon.co.nz.

Marketing through social networks is generating so much information and commentary that it’s mind-numbing. The problem is that most social media participants are focused on telling, but no-one seems to be listening. Perhaps they are online just to be part of the flock and haven’t thought about a strategy for participating.

It continues to amaze me when I mention a brand or company in a blog or tweet, how I seldom hear back from them. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s a positive or negative comment, they just don’t seem to hear.

That’s not to say that everyone is guilty of this. I do get responses, but sadly they are in the minority. With the array of online tracking tools available to us today, there is no excuse or reason not to be aware of what people are saying about you online.

If you do choose to participate in social media and social network marketing, you owe it to yourself and your followers to engage in meaningful two-way communication. If you don’t reciprocate and participate, your online reputation may be tarnished and your hard-earned following will become worthless.

Stop obsessing about gathering more followers than Paris Hilton, because social media is not a numbers game – it’s all about quality of relationships. It’s better to have a smaller circle and work it actively, than to have thousands of followers and never interact with them.

And if you choose not to participate in social media, at least make the effort to keep your ear to the e-ground. The influence that social media can exert on brands is astounding, so you ignore it at your own peril.

Imagine you're a woman and you see a handsome man at a party. You go up to him and say, "I’m fantastic in bed." That's Direct Marketing.

You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a handsome man. One of your friends goes up to him and pointing at you says, "She’s fantastic in bed." That's Advertising.

You see a handsome man at a party. You go up to him and get his telephone number. The next day you call and say, "Hi, I’m fantastic in bed." That's Telemarketing.

You see a man at a party, you straighten your dress. You walk up to him and pour him a drink. You say, "May I," and reach up to straighten his tie, brushing your breast lightly against his arm… And then say, "By the way, I’m fantastic in bed." That's Public Relations.

You're at a party and see a handsome man. He walks up to you and says, "I hear you’re fantastic in bed." That's Brand Recognition.

You're at a party and see a handsome man. He fancies you, but you talk him into going home with your friend. That's a Sales Rep.

Your friend can’t satisfy him so she calls you. That's Tech Support.

You're on your way to a party when you realize that there could be handsome men in all the houses you're passing. So you climb onto the roof of one situated towards the centre and shout at the top of your lungs, "I’m fantastic in bed" That’s Junk Mail.

2009 has been a rollercoaster ride for marketers that are involved in web 2.0 and social media integration. What amazes me is just how compressed and fast-moving the product lifecycle in this space has become.

Many traditional marketing media have taken many years to evolve and mature, but social media is in the superfast lane and we now measure major changes in weeks or maybe just a few months. Today there are so many new social networking platforms available for business marketing compared to a year ago, that it’s hard to keep up, let alone participate effectively.

The holidays are a great opportunity for us to step back from the social media marketing coalface and reassess which of the myriad of tools is delivering value. My regular platforms are blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn and FaceBook and I’ll definitely be reviewing the level of involvement that each of these deserves in 2010.

Each of them certainly does have some inherent value, but I’ve realised that to get a decent return, you need to participate on a regular and active basis. Maybe you should make a list of the platforms you are involved in and rate them as follows:

* Amount of time each one requires to participate effectively
* Potential value and ROI if you participate effectively
* How much time you can afford to commit to social media in general

Once you have an objective rating system you can apply the old 80/20 rule - select the platform/s that will potentially produce the best return for the least effort and then go hard at it/them. I know that I’m going to be doing just this exercise, and would be keen to hear how you get on with your rating and re-evaluation exercise.