Total Marketing Solutions

Just when we all thought we were spending too much time searching for all manner of things online, it turns out that this might be slowly changing. Gone is the novelty of sifting through endless search engine results. With a rapidly-increasing number of apps now targetted at our own specific information needs, there is a slowly-emerging trend in reduced online searching. Instead, more people are relying on a well-targetted and highly relevant app to deliver the information required - be it a certain type of restaurant in a specific city to the latest surf report for your favourite beach (Crackington Haven in case you’re interested!)

So what does this mean for those companies already investing in SEO and PPC campaigns? As their customer base slowly develops a more sophisticated taste for the more personal information they are looking for - rather than the information they don’t want - companies will need to develop a deeper understanding of how best to communicate with their customers. Watch this space……

A recent study produced by the DMA in conjunction with Alchemy Works claims that consumers are responding more favourably than ever before to email marketing. The report - which credits improved segmentation and better targeting for this growth - blows apart some common myths about the effectiveness of email marketing.

Whilst many might believe that consumers are being bombarded by endless numbers of unwanted emails, the report clearly contradicts this. Over 60% of respondents were signed up to 10 or fewer senders - a surprisingly low number considering the options available to your average consumer. So whilst your email is not necessarily clamouring for attention amidst a sea of competitors, getting onto that list of 10 represents another challenge.

In 2010, one in 10 consumers stated that 50% or more emails they received were of interest. In the 2011 report, this number increases to one in three.

Amongst the more surprising findings was that fact that only 3% of consumers pick up their emails on a smartphone, whilst 61% don’t check or use email at work.

What the report reflects is that there is now a greater understanding of how to segment markets and how to make email content appealing to specific segments.  It also shows that 45% of respondents don’t act on an email immediately, but file the information for later use. This makes response tracking far more complex, but would hint at an even greater effectiveness for your email campaign than straight click thru numbers.

Our experience as marketing consultants with expertise in digital marketing enables us to help customers get on their customers top ten list with relevant content to targetted customers.

Whilst we are always at great pains to stress the strategic nature of our marketing consultancy, we obviously do get involved in helping customers to develop or improve their online presence. We have over the years  helped customers develop some highly successful websites across a variety of sectors, working together with our web design partners.

But as any quick sortie into google will testify, setting up a website is no longer the sole preserve of the web designer. Thanks to an ever-increasing array of web design tools, together with cheap hosting packages and idiot-proof content management systems, companies are able to launch a website at a considerably lower cost than hiring a web developer/designer. But what does this new trend signify for the vast number of highly skilled web developers out there?

Thankfully it does not appear that the writing is on the wall for the truly creative, talented developer. What has happened is that, whilst the barriers to entering the online market are being lowered every day, finding the right person to create a truly compelling, commercially robust online presence for your company is still a difficult goal to achieve. The technical, routine aspect of setting up a website is now no longer shrouded in mystery. But creating a valuable online resource, which accurately reflects and promotes your company and your brand values in an original way is still something of an art.

The combination of engaging content, fantastic design, powerful SEO and bespoke coding is still beyond the capability of any off-the-shelf package. And the importance of getting each of these core elements absolutely right is still at the heart of what makes a great website really work for you. Web design isn’t dying, it’s just growing up.

Just when everyone was getting to grips to the various social networking methods and how to use them, the online social space has just got more crowded with the arrival of a new competitor to LinkedIn called BeKnown. It has been developed by Monster, the jobs website, and perhaps the most interesting thing about BeKnown is that it resides within Facebook as an app. This now means that Facebook’s estimated 700 million users will be able to create a network of professional contacts, separate from friends and family contacts. Primarily developed to help jobseekers find their next new position, it’s going to be interesting to see just how effective BeKnown will become. Especially as Facebook use is banned at many companies within the UK - not that anyone spends time at work looking for a new job….

And if this major new development is not enough, Google has finally unveiled Google+, their new social layer designed to change the whole search engine into one giant social network.  It is in effect Google’s answer to Facebook, with users able to share photos, videos and links with their network of friends. It’s only just being field-tested, so it will be interesting to see how the Google leviathon squares up to Facebook.

For companies who have now dipped their toes in the water and who are using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, this is a new opportunity to exploit - but just how good they will be remains to be seen. We manage the social network accounts of a number of clients in our role as marketing consultants, and each one has seen a significant benefit since starting their social networking campaign. Whilst evidence of success remains more anecdotal than factual but what does seem certain is that companies who do not embrace social networking are missing an opportunity - and one which just got considerably bigger. After all, if Google and Facebook are developing and expanding their services, there just might be something in it!

With all the current ongoing furore surrounding privacy laws, the real star of the show is turning out to be twitter. People have long appreciated the immediacy and uniqueness of twitter, without necessarily being able to turn that appreciation into an advantage in business terms. But few will disagree now that twitter is here to stay and that - used carefully - it can develop into an extremely powerful tool to complement your other online marketing activities.  But where to start? Once your account is up and running, take the time to search out who you want to follow - segmenting your target market sectors where relevant. Then make sure you follow everyone who starts to follow you and build your audience from there. You can keep up to date with what people are saying about your company or products and services by searching for your ID, company name and industry segment. Set up searches for things you’d like your company to be known for - and then tweet a response every time that search term comes up. And make it easy to share by adding a twitter button to your website. There are countless online guides to getting the most out of twitter but the best approach is to jump in and get tweeting.

We’ve recently come across an interesting report published by Marketing Week in conjunction with SAS UK. The report follows in-depth surveys amongst over 500 marketing decision-makers last October so identify their current plans regarding marketing spend and their take on future trends. It makes for very interesting reading indeed. Whilst seven out of 10 of the marketers surveyed stated that they expect this year to represent a significant opportunity to capture market share and to grow, only 45% of those surveyed are convinced that their company can adapt to some of the changes it will face, but not be in a position to adapt to all of them. The report highlights that danger that, having managed to survive an uncertain past, marketing has still not learned how to plan for an uncertain future.

The report goes on to show that whilst many marketing professionals and those responsible for marketing within their organisation have come to terms with some of the major changes in marketing conditions during the last year or so, many have yet to grasp the significant changes in how marketing itself has changed. Multichannel routes to market are now embedded in the marketing mix and like it or not - they’re here to stay, or rather to continuously develop and mutate and change the marketing landscape. Worrying, however, is the fact that marketers themselves are continuing to struggle with their capabilities across such a wide range of potential marketing channels. The report also claims that marketers’ skills are developing more slowly than the role these diverse channels are increasingly playing. The report concludes that as changes to the market are a constant, then marketing itself needs to be able to keep up and change too.

A bit of a rant this week I’m afraid. We were recently approached by a well financed start up company looking for some help in putting together their go-to-market plan. Not an unusual event in that we get many such approaches. The company in question was being launched by a number of highly professional and intelligent Directors all of whom had a strong professional services background. The Directors had ambitious growth plans for their business and recognised that they needed some help with their marketing and business development plans - particularly in relation to digital marketing. SO FAR SO GOOD. Sounds like potentially a perfect customer where TMS can add lots of value by helping them put together and implement a truly market-led strategy together!

Then it all starts to go horribly wrong….

We explained what we do & how we add value and how we have delivered significant results for our clients and we started to explore their needs in real depth. At this point it becomes apparent that there is a disconnection between what we would define as a market-led strategy and what they believe the term means. It is immediately apparent that they are talking about a marketing communications strategy - website, SEO, PPC, advertising etc whereas what we are talking about is obviously far more fundamental than that. We explained that without having a market-led strategy in place first, there is a huge risk that any marcomms strategy will probably end up targeting the wrong people with the wrong messages using the wrong communications channels ie. A potentially huge waste of time & money!

Try as we might, we failed to convince them of the value of putting together a market-led strategy BEFORE diving into what are essentially tactical deliver plans (it is a misuse of the word strategy to apply it in the context of marcomms in our opinion  - marcomms are tactical activities) Upon exploring this further it became apparent that the reason that they didn’t see the need to look at developing a market-led strategy was because they felt that they had already done this for themselves. At this point my blood started to boil a bit & I felt like asking them “what experience & expertise have you got in the field of developing marketing strategy - what qualifies you to do this?” I stopped myself because it is clear that despite being very clever people in their field, they had no real comprehension of the concepts of marketing strategy and they were not prepared to listen and learn. They thought it was simple and that they could do it for themselves equally as well as people with years of experience and practice.

Upon reflection I think the point that dismayed me most about this was the fact that even educated, intelligent people completely underestimate and undervalue the  expertise & experience that we have in developing marketing strategy. I wouldn’t presume to think that I could argue a legal case (even though I watched every episode of LA Law!) nor would I think that I could prepare someone’s accounts. I recognise that to do these things you need expertise & experience that comes from years of training & practical application - so why don’t people think the same way about Marketing Strategy? After all it is an equally essential professional discipline. I’m feeling a bit like Don Quixote tilting at windmills because it is just another example of how my profession has failed to convince people of our worth and the commercial value that marketing can deliver when done properly by professionals.

Sorry for the rant!

Whilst most companies now have some form of digital marketing activity either planned or underway - from a Pay Per Click campaign to SEO and regular blogging, how many of these campaigns can be evaluated as truly effective? Whilst a lot of time and effort is certainly (hopefully?) spent on segmenting audiences and then selecting the most appropriate digital channel to communicate with each segment, how many companies - particularly smaller SME’s with limited resources and budgets - then spend the required time to properly analyse all the data created by their digital marketing activities? And crucially, to then adjust online marketing activities to react to all this new-found customer information?
Whilst online marketing offers so much more information - much of it instant - on what our customers are up to than offline line mediums, this information is only of any real value if it then helps us to become more effective in our communications with our customers. But this all takes time - hence the large amount of blanket emails with the same old, untargetted message that we all receive every day. So what’s the best way to ensure that digital marketing really works harder?
A good place to start is a thorough data audit - time-consuming but vital if you want to ensure that your future digital spend is working as hard as it can for you. A full data audit should not only look at your own customer database, but any website and banner advertising tracking information, google adwords data if available and email marketing data.
Once you’ve done the legwork, making sense of this information is the next step. By carefully looking at all the data you have available, teasing out any trends, you might find some startling revelations: perhaps only 5% of all your website visitors return, or 60% of them bounce (leave without visiting any other pages), perhaps 75% of your customers for a particular product are female. These trends can be highlight potential new revenue streams to be further developed or even shed a light on why a particular service or products isn’t performing well.
Having gained a more profound insight into how your digital marketing is working, you can then think about redefining your digital marketing strategy for the future: how to reduce a high bounce rate from your home page, how to communicate features and benefits more clearly. It might mean a complete overhaul of all your online communications - but as long as you analyse it and then act on those findings you should be heading in the right direction.

There’s no getting away from the fact that when you take the time to measure an activity, it gives you something very tangible you can then set about improving. Seth Godin points out that thanks to constant developments in IT, it’s easy to optimize just about every aspect of our working lives. And whilst we as marketing consultants have extolled the virtues of a well-optimised website or blog post, or the improved effectiveness of a well-targetted, optimised ad campaign, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that somewhere along the line, the main focus should always remain on actual creation - not on optimisation.

It’s still a fine line to walk, because you can of course optimize your creation time as well by developing new habits to get the most out of your thought process.  But a never-ending cycle of optimization can also become a crutch, a place to hide when you really should be confronting the real issues your business is facing. It’s a salutory lesson that while Yahoo was optimizing their home page in 2001, those cheeky chaps at Google were inventing something totally new.

It’s been a while in the making but we are now ready to launch our new website. It’s taken us quite a while to get this far, lots of blood, sweat and tears - but we’re sure it will all be worthwhile now we’re live. To find out what all the fuss is about please visit the site and take a look around:- www.totalmarketingsolutions.co.uk

So how have we gone about it? We’ve literally followed our own advice - the advice we give our customers if a new website is one of the strategic recommendations we make following our usual rigorous review and audit of their business.

Step one, obvious though it seems, was to identify our business objectives for the site. It’s surprising how many companies decide they need a website “because everyone else has one”, without thinking about what they want it to do for them. Your objective might be to increase new customer account registration, it might be to increase the number of sales leads or enquiries generated. Whatever your objective/s, you can use your web analytics to measure any improvements and then tweak your website further if required. As strategic marketing consultants, our objective for our new website was to primarily increase the number of quality leads generated - we needed to make sure we clearly communicated how we work, with the emphasis on strategy development.

The next stage is to look at how customers will use the site and how their experience can be improved. Again, web analytics plays an important role here. You can look for potential problem areas like drop-offs and take steps to solve them. We found that whilst we had a significant number of visitors to our existing site, this didn’t translate into the number of enquiries we would expect. And a large number of enquiries were from companies looking for an advertising agency - our message was not as clear as it should have been. We want our new website to scream “marketing strategy development” from every page, whilst leaving potential customers looking for strategic help convinced we are the right company for them to do business with.

The final - and perhaps the most challenging  - stage, is to go through each page with a fine toothcomb, ensuring each one works as best as it can for you. We’ve taken a close look at each one of our existing pages, re-written or tweaked it, added new pages and content - it’s still a work in progress and the good thing about websites is that they are never cast in stone and are always a work in progress.  So what have we been looking at on each of our pages?

• We’ve stepped up the optimisation of the site, making sure all copy, titles and labels are able to improve our natural search results.
• We’ve also removed content that just wasn’t getting visited and focussed on improving the content on the key pages, making it easier for visitors to the site to get the information they need quickly.
• We’ve also used our web analytics to make sure we cover as many search terms as possible to avoid any “No results” keyword searches - so if you type in “marketing consultants”, you’ll find TMS at the top of the page. You’ll also find us under “marketing strategy consultants,” “marketing consultancy,” etc - you get the point! Don’t just think of the one search - try to think of as many different permutations of what you do and use web analytics to identify the main ones. Then build them into your site.
• We’ve also taken time to improve our home page - making sure we communicate our core messages quickly, whilst making it easier for visitors to find out the information they need in order to progress to an enquiry.
• We’ve also reduced the number of steps visitors have to take from our home page to begin key processes, like looking at case studies, finding our what we do and - of course - making an enquiry.
• We also hope that, having tweaked the layout, design and colours used on each page, this will improve click-thru rates and encourage visitors to visit more pages - in other words, to really get to know us and ultimately, gain a greater understanding of how we can help them.

Time will tell of course and rest assured that, as with any new website, we shall be monitoring our web analytics very closely after launch to see just how our new website is working for us.