Posts tagged brands
Putting your brand in the right hands
Aug 11th
By Mat Diss, Co-Founder, bemoko
Back in 2008, IBM released survey results which suggested more than 50% of people would gladly substitute their PC web for mobile web. The reasoning behind this is pretty straightforward, because it enables the consumer to make a choice as to when and where they connect, whether in private, out and about, and when inspired by other influencers.
There’s clearly a strong wish from consumers to embrace the mobile internet, but sadly the reality, even now in today’s smartphone led world is that getting ‘online’ can be a pretty awful experience. And that’s not good for marketing your brand.
You’ll know what I mean if you have tried to call up a site only to have to squint to read the text, or suffered badly pixellated text when you pinch and zoom in. Ever visited a site with a store locator or a login? Smartphones are usually GPS enabled, they know where and who you are! And if you hit a site with Flash, well that effectively triples the page download time, if it works at all.
So why can’t sites be instantly clear and navigable on the mobile screen? Why can’t images be delivered in the right size and resolution for the screen’s capability? Crucially why can’t content be personalised for me without having to ask? Here’s the thing, they can – but only if brands take time to put some thought into the creation of their mobile website. Given that the branded website is one of the most powerful marketing tools in your arsenal it beggars belief that the mobile opportunity is so often misunderstood, or worse still overlooked.
Here then, are five simple steps you need to consider when marketing on mobile:
1. Discover – Ways of finding a site can come from social media, SMS, QR code stickers, mobile email, search, promotions and the oldest of marketing options – posters and signs.
2. Engage – seize the opportunity to engage with your consumer, keep the site social, conversational, make it relevant, and reward your visitors
3. Trust – Your brand is in their hand, so it needs to look and feel right. According to a recent survey by Monotype, “86% of survey respondents in the UK would not trust a communication from a source they often use, if the details were sent in an unfamiliar font.” The user experience must be perfect, and it must present a level of quality equal to the brand. You realistically have one shot at hooking your consumer, so you need to make it count.
4. Measure – Analytics are your friend, they can identify good performance, root out the bad, and provide crucial feedback that lets you improve your site. And that’s important because you must…
5. Repeat – by delivering a social, valuable service the consumer will want to return, and in the best case scenario will become your brand ambassador and take your site viral.
One day we’ll just call it the web, whether we are desk surfing, or hopping online wherever we are. Right now the mobile web offers huge potential to extend marketing campaigns. We can finally drive functional content onto devices wherever you are, with the right branded look and feel that ensures a warm familiarity, and so deliver long term engagement with the customer.
RESEARCH WATCH: The next digital battleground for brands
May 25th
The internet is viewed as a “double-edged sword” for businesses, according to the latest brands research from intellectual property group, Marks & Clerk.
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of marketers feel that while the digital age has brought tremendous opportunity for brand promotion, intellectual property abuses and threats to brand integrity are more numerous and difficult to protect against.
Evil eBay?
Respondents reserved particular criticism for eBay, which has been at the centre of a recent storm of court battles with luxury goods companies over the abundance of counterfeit goods for sale on its auction site.
More than 86% claim that eBay should be at least partly liable for the distribution of counterfeit goods on its site, while 59% claim eBay’s current efforts to combat counterfeiters using its site are insufficient. A further 64% described it as “unreasonable” to expect brand owners to police individual items on the site themselves. A sizeable majority (91%) believe that stricter conditions and penalties ought to be directly imposed on secondary markets such as eBay, to combat counterfeiting.
Pam Withers, Partner at Marks & Clerk, said, “For many brand owners, the assertion that eBay encourages counterfeiting is probably politely described as an understatement. Platforms like eBay offer the counterfeiting industry one of the most effective distribution channels we have ever seen, while the size and scale of online marketplaces makes constant monitoring and the detection of crime almost impossible for brand owners.” Read the rest of this entry »
Absolut caught out by ‘I’m Here’ online film fans
Apr 9th
Vodka company Absolut had an idea. That brainwave may have come in the sauna (with the company being Swedish). Or perhaps during a roll in the snow.
But it was a very good idea. The idea was to work with acclaimed film director, Spike Jonze, and the result was a 30-minute robot love story film entitled, ‘I’m Here’.
It was released in January 2010, at imheremovie.com but unfortunately – or perhaps more fortunately – has been an overwhelming success.
According to the vodka folks ‘I’m Here’ is screened every two hours on imheremovie.com, limited to just 5,000 viewers per day, the capacity of the site is now to be expanded to 12,000 a day.
In it’s first weekend of release the online movie theatre apparently clocked up 230,000 unique visitors alone.
“’I’m Here’ marks an evolution of our commitment to creativity, and I’m very happy about the great interest in this film. It is a beautiful story and a fantastic piece of art,” said Vice President Global Marketing at The Absolut Company, Anna Malmhake.
Seen in the worst light, it could be just a load of spin from Absolut. But there are widen implications.
It’s a reflection of just how viewing habits online are growing. In fact as we’ve already reported on UTalkMarketing, Online video is medium of choice for marketers in 2010
Why? Well it’s all down to the growth of broadband across the UK.
Absolut obviously knew the film was going to be popular. Otherwise they’d never have commissioned it in the first place.
They’ve also been driving traffic by integrating the project on Facebook, making it possible for social networkers to see the film together with friends.
But it looks like they underestimated just how popular it might be.
Lessons to be learnt?
Marketers should never underestimate the potential appeal of online video
Get it right and 230,000 unique visitors could be engaging with your brand over just one weekend too.
With the costs of video production falling too, there are no excuses for not making the leap into digital celluloid.
We’ve even got some top tips on How to produce video that delivers on a tight marketing budget here
Goodbye to the Facebook “fan.” Hello to the “like.”
Apr 1st
Facebook is replacing its “fan” buttons with “like” buttons on ads that direct users to big brands’ “fan pages” in a bid to further monetise the social networking site.
That’s according to new internal information acquired by All Things Digital.
Brand ‘fan pages’ are nothing new, of course but the problem for Facebook is they can be set up and operated for free.
All that free exposure to 400 million users via what is in effect a microsite for nada? Naturally Facebook is not happy so is now encouraging brands to buy ads on the site promoting the pages.
The move from ‘Fan’ to ‘Like’ has been prompted by a couple of developments.
First up is the fact that users have demonstrated the success of the ‘like’ button in other contexts – such as status up dates and photos. Facebook claims this is used twice as frequently as the ‘become a fan of’ button.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is the bigger picture. Facebook, according to All Things Digital, will be driving to add the ‘like’ button throughout the Web as a way of funneling more and more interaction onto its platform.
“‘Like’ offers a simple, consistent way for people to connect with the things they are interested in. These lighter-weight actions mean people will make more connections across the site, including with your branded Facebook Pages,” Facebook said a FAQ Sheet, All Things Digital claims to have get its hands on.
“I believe this will result in gaining more connections to pages since our research has shown that some users would be more comfortable with the term “Like”. The goal is to get the most user connections so that you can have ongoing conversations in the news feeds of as many users as possible.”
It adds, “The core functionality of Pages will not change. For instance, your Pages will still have distribution into your fans’ News Feed and you can still call the people who “Like” your Page, “Fans”-your Fans are still your Fans.”
Will users notice the difference in the change of buttons? Possibly. Will they care about the name change? Probably not.
Will the name change increase user engagement with brands? Facebook seems to think so. I’m not so sure.
After all, at the end of the day, it’s about whether you like a brand or not; not really about the difference between ‘like’ or being a ‘fan’.
Why your digital strategy is all about the ‘fans’
Feb 9th
Brands are increasingly migrating to Facebook, setting up Fan pages and getting rid of their own branded websites. But can social media replace a corporate presence on the web?
As you are probably well aware of by now, Facebook as yet again rolled out a new home page design. The site is still looking to make money you see, and to do that it needs to make the look and feel more attractive and navigation easier for users, including brands who have their own ‘Fan’ pages and profiles.
Everyone from Toyota to McDonalds, to Coca-Cola to UTalkMarketing has a Facebook ‘Fan’ page. And with the popularity and users’ willingness to become Fans, will Facebook Fan pages make branded websites redundant?
Coke is just one global brand that is shifting its digital focus away from traditional campaign sites and towards community platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, as social media begins to dictate their marketing activity in 2010, according to newmediaage. Kelloggs has also made a similar move and will host digital activity on social media platforms including Facebook.
The benefits of Facebook are simple: it’s where your customers are spending the majority of their online time (some 350 million global customers, that is).
Facebook Fan pages also allow you and your customers to communicate in real time. Fans can also communicate with each other allowing you to listen in to the conversation and monitor what is being said about you.
Also, you’re only a mouse click away and don’t need to build a time consuming and expensive SEO and site awareness campaign to attract visitors
Moreover, creating a Fan Page is free, quick and easy. People actively engage on Facebook commenting, uploading photos and sharing interesting links, helping them to feel like part of the campaign. Awareness also spreads virally when people joining Fan Pages appears in the news feed.
So how do you build a successful Fan page on Facebook?
1. Network with other platforms
2. Creating a resource
3. Creating contests that include participation
4. Empowering pre-existing pages
5. Targeting the proper demographic
Creating a Facebook fan page is simple, but it will also take time to build up a community of followers. Build good content, make it easy to share, and let people know about it, and over-time maybe you too could phase out your corporate site.
The right tools to help you monetise your tweets
Jan 5th
It’s finally 2010 – the year that will be Twitter’s “revenue year” as promised by co-founder Biz Stone.
And it’s encouraging to note that according to a new OneNewsPage.com poll published on UTalkMarketing half of respondents are also making money from their Twitter activities.
We heavily covered ‘All things Twitter’ last year including how marketers and brands can monetize their tweets and how to incorporate tweets into their everyday marketing activities as a way of keeping in touch with consumers.
Twitter has more than 40 million monthly users, with London being the international hub of activity. Last year, Microsoft began to integrate Twitter messages into Bing, its new search engine, and Google announced a deal to do the same meaning that this year, tweets will be more visible and possibly more lucrative than ever before.
So here’s a list of tools to help you get the most from your 140-character status this year:
1. TwitterCounter
TwitterCounter analyses your account or that of any person using Twitter and provides information on the number of followers over time plotted on a graph.
It uses this information to extrapolate your likely follower growth in the future. You can also find statistics such as your current ranking on Twitter according to follower numbers, and you can then compare this to the most popular users on the service.
2. Twitalyzer
Find out how much influence you have on Twitter. Twitalyzer analyses your activity in five areas: influence, signal, generosity, velocity and clout.
Signal indicates the proportion of tweets that contain information, generosity measures how willing the user is to re-tweet, velocity watches how regularly tweets are made and clout refers to how often the user is referenced by others. Influence is a combination of all of these scores.
3. TwitVid
Share video clips via Twitter. You can upload videos and add a tweet to go with it. TwitVid links to Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.
4. The Twitter Tag Project
Follow Friday is a weekly event on Twitter where users recommend new people to follow. You do this by sending a tweet including the username or names of the people who you want to recommend marked with the hash tag ‘#followfriday’.
The Twitter Tag Project provides a tool to help you work out who to recommend. Enter your username, and it’ll suggest a bunch of people based on your last 200 tweets, ready formatted into #followfriday tweets.
5. TweetGrid
TweetGrid offers a similar service to Monitter, but integrates elements of a full Twitter client. You can log in and use it to send tweets and make re-tweets as well as monitoring searches in real time.
You can also opt for different page layouts, including three columns, or grids of three-by-three searches, giving you nine searches on one page.
6. Twitterholic
Find out how addicted you are to Twitter by entering your username at this site. You’ll get an overall ranking and a ranking by your location. You can also see what tags have been applied to your account. Twitterholic also shows the top 100 Twitter users for context
7. Friend or Follow
Worried about who’s following you back, or who’s dropped you shortly after following you? Friend or Follow helps you find these answers. Go to the site and enter your username.
Friend or Follow then analyses your account and presents you with three lists: people you’re following but aren’t following you back; people who follow you who you aren’t following back and people you’re following who are also following you.
8. TwitterFeed
Automatically notify your Twitter followers whenever you post to your blog. It does this, simply enough, by linking your blog’s RSS feed to your Twitter account.
You can sign in using an open ID and then link your Twitter account. TwitterFeed also enables you to check for updates at hourly or daily intervals and include your blog post title in the automatic tweet.
9. Dabr
Dabr is a lightweight web-based front-end for Twitter that’s optimised for mobile use. It offers many of the functions that other Twitter clients provide, and increasing numbers of desktop PC users have switched to Dabr because of its speed and ease of use.
Icons next to each tweet enable you to reply, re-tweet, mark as a favourite or direct-message the user. Pictures appear as thumbnails in the timeline
10. Mr Tweet
Mr Tweet helps you to find new followers based on people you already follow by looking at their followers and people that they recommend. If you recommend people to Mr Tweet, your followers will see your recommendations and Mr Tweet will use them to help improve his recommendations, which you’ll see when you visit.
11. Twittervision
Watch a selection of tweets as they are posted in realtime set against their locations on a world map. Twittervision is fascinating to watch, although of course you only see a small fraction of the tweets currently being made around the planet. It does gives you a feel for where the global Twitter hotspots are, though
12. Monitter
Monitter supplies real-time search updates from Twitter presented in multiple columns. Search by username, hash tag or keyword. You can enter a different search in each column, and they constantly update.
There’s no need to log in or even have a Twitter account. This makes Monitter a useful place to go if you’ve been working with a client application and have used up the limited number of API calls per hour Twitter permits you to make.
How to create and tailor your next ad simply by listening in…
Nov 23rd
A number of big brand advertisers and marketers and experiment with developing ad campaigns based on what consumers are talking about on the web.
Monitoring what internet users say in their instant messages, social networks and blogs isn’t anything new, of course. There has been many a study telling us what the most popular brands discussed on the internet is (Apple’s iPhone, Vegemite, Starbucks and Microsoft just to name a few).
But now, marketers are using new technologies to scan the web for key words to find out what consumers are—and aren’t—saying about their brands, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Marketers can then incorporate those findings into their more-conventional research to create specific text and photos for their ads given what consumers seem to want – or, what they say they want, at least.
Furthermore, once the campaigns are up and running, advertisers are using the same web-scanning technologies to gauge consumer reaction to their messages, and to fine-tune them.
Marketers have long drawn on information from the web to help them design their web sites and online marketing campaigns.
Now, more of them have begun to use it to guide their marketing across a range of media, including print and TV, and in choosing the overall strategy for those campaigns.
Digital marketing and advances in the technologies available to marketers and advertisers don’t just mean more channels to advertise – they mean more channel to listen, too.
Jason Falls, a social media consultant and blogger on socialmediaexplorer.com, said that it is “imperative” that companies and brands can gauge public opinion about them by listening in to online conversations.
He added that companies could also then interject in these discussions and that while marketers may not have control over the conversations, they should at least have a participatory role in them.
Services such as Google Alerts and searches on Twitter, Google Blogs and Bing can allow companies to keep track of conversations about their company.
According to recent research from Harris Interactive and Tealeaf, more adults are turning to social media to talk about problems they have had with brands and companies.
Here are some sites to help you:
and the old favourite, Google Alerts
Recent Comments