Category Archives: Social media

Digital and retail marketing trends: 2012 is the year of…

Posted on by Lucy Freeborn

So here we are…the start of another year.  Having settled back in to the swing of things after a much needed festive break, we’ve looked back on the events of 2011 to make our (slightly belated!) predictions for the key digital marketing and retail trends of 2012.

So here goes…

 

Mobile integration into multichannel retail:
While marketers have been proclaiming it to be the “year of mobile” for as long as I can remember, 2011 was perhaps the year when this was actually realised.

We saw a significant increase in the numbers of retailers integrating mobile tactics into their multichannel campaigns in 2011.  Most recently we saw John Lewis trialling QR codes in Waitrose window displays across various UK locations (Brighton included) to promote their click and collect service.

2012 will see more effective mobile integration into online and offline marketing campaigns as brands really start joining the digital dots, breaking down the silos between those channels to deliver seamless customer experiences.  As the penetration of smartphone use grows, mobile optimisation of websites, multichannel promotions and campaigns redeemable across social, mobile and print have to be the norm for forward thinking brands by the end of 2012.

It is also the responsibility of genuinely consultative digital agencies to de-mystify mobile for their clients and ensure investments are made when the right ‘tipping point’ has been reached. For example, we are typically seeing 10% of traffic to our clients’ sites coming from mobile devices. Comparing conversion rates between desktop and mobile visitors enables us to quickly calculate approximate losses in mobile revenue due to the lack of a mobile optimised site or application, which in turn helps build a business case for investment.

Social commerce:
If brands operating in the retail space aren’t already thinking about how they can enable customers to purchase via their social media channels then we’d argue they are already behind the curve.  The easier you make it for your customers to research, consider and purchase your products, regardless of the channel (website, mobile, social media, etc), the better it’s going to be for your sales figures.

We’re working with our clients on a variety of simple social applications to encourage sales via social channels.  Wary brands don’t need to commit to full Facebook shopping functionality immediately, but by starting to capture data, encourage honest reviews, have customer service teams communicating to customers via social channels and enabling social sharing once purchases are made, we can start more accurately demonstrating how social can have a measureable effect on the bottom line.

Genuinely putting the customer at the heart of your strategy:
With budgets inevitably squeezed in 2012, maximising return on investment from every activity is more vital than ever. As well as scrutinising every penny spent, 2012 also needs to be the year where you genuinely put the customer at the heart of everything you do.

Only if brands understand what their target audience genuinely care about, what media they consume, channels they use, how they want to interact with the brand and how they perceive the brand online and offline, can a digital marketing strategy reach its potential.

We’ve noticed an increase in our clients signing off customer insight projects during Q4 last year to refresh their understanding of their customers so that, in turn, their digital marketing strategy and tactical execution is relevant, compelling and effective as possible.

In recent years there’s been an explosion in brands getting excited about digital and allowing some creative hotshot agencies to convince them to throw vast sums of budget at a potentially great, but untried, idea – often without robust objectives, KPIs and measurement tools in place. These days are over – 2012 is going to be the year when brands invest time and money to ensure they truly understand their target audience, their most profitable customers and the lifetime value of those customers.  In turn, every digital activity will become more accountable. If it fails to increase customer acquisition, average order values or repeat business, it will be thrown out. Digital marketing will become genuinely targeted, executed and evaluated based on much greater focus on the customer.

For me, a happy client with a double-digit sales increase from activity we’ve delivered is more exciting and rewarding than a night out at a creative awards ceremony!  This is not to say we shun creativity, far from it! But creativity needs to be balanced with commerciality.

Delivering cross channel ROI and measuring the impact of online activity to offline sales:
It’s becoming increasingly important for brands to demonstrate how a digital tweak here, can have a positive impact in offline sales there.

In 2011, we significantly expanded our tracking and sales attribution tool set. In one case, we’ve worked with a client to integrate call tracking software into the multichannel attribution software we use.  This has helped the client gain a full 360 view of the impact each of their marketing channels plays in the research and consideration phases of their customer buying journey. Tracking the relationship between online and offline sales has meant that we have been able to measure how online activity influences offline sales with some really exciting results.

As marketing budgets comes under more scrutiny, combining offline and online data to build a more accurate view of customer behaviour and importantly, accurately attribute sales to their respective marketing channel, is going to be vital in 2012. This will help brands better understand their most productive marketing channels so they can take a flexible approach to their wider marketing budget and siphon budgets into channels that are genuinely making a difference to sales.

That’s what we think 2012 has in store. What about you?

Facebook ‘Likes’ and travel sites

Posted on by Ben Adam

A recent study from Usabilla looking at user experience of 800 users across 18 leading travel websites turned up some very interesting results. There was a great deal to learn from the study but perhaps the biggest surprise was the negative reaction shown towards the inclusion of the Facebook Like buttons.

Amongst the negative feedback towards the Facebook Like buttons where comments such as “trying too hard”, “unprofessional”, “infantile” and generally a lot of comments of “hate”. The comment “I am here to book a trip, not to market this company on Facebook” summarised the feedback nicely. Strong words indeed.

So don’t include Facebook Like’s on travel websites?

Not so fast. These negative responses are not likely to be purely down to the inclusion of Facebook Like buttons, more the way they have been incorporated into the site and the approach taken by the brand when trying to communicate the reason for their inclusion to customers.

So how should you include Facebook Likes into a travel site?

Don’t just plonk your Facebook button on the home page or every page of the site without any thought. There are a number of considerations that should be made when incorporating a like button:

Placement

Consider carefully where you place the button. Add to content that people will actually want to share and endorse to get the most traction. This might include:

  • Photos and photo galleries
  • Guides and useful information such as ‘things to do’
  • Blog posts or news articles

Communication

If you still want people to like your brand, try to position the button as to “follow” rather than to “Like” on Facebook and try to communicate what’s in it for them, for example:

  • To stay updated though the Facebook news feed
  • Access to special offers or deals only for followers

Additionally, consider if including an indicator of the number of ‘Likes’ will instill trust and help increase conversions.

Alternatives

Don’t forget about Facebook Send. There’s a nice example on the Facebook page where someone is sharing an Orbitz Hotel page with their roommates. Facebook Send is private and like a ‘Like’ can be sent to different Facebook friends or groups. Facebook explain it best:

“We designed the Send button to be used alongside the Like button. By including both on your website, people will have ability to broadcast the things they like and also send it to specific people.”

Testing and measuring

Don’t just add a button and forget about it, there are exact ways to measure the levels of interaction and identify the combinations that are performing best:

  •  Use a/b testing to change the position, size, etc to see which variation encourages the greatest level of engagement
  • Setup the Social Tracking in Google Analytics to see if people are interacting and sharing your content

Simply putting the Facebook ‘Like’ button on your homepage because “everyone else is doing it” is a big ‘no no’. Sometimes it’s better not to do things at all than do them badly so seriously consider the above carefully to make the Facebook Like work well for both your business and your customers.

The importance of content planning to search, sales & social media

Posted on by Lucy Freeborn

For a long time, we’ve been driving home the importance of content to meeting your online objectives. In fact, Ben wrote about the relationship between content, search marketing and social media back in 2009.

Content can be used to connect with and engage your audience at each stage of their buying journey. As such, I believe that content planning should be core to your digital marketing strategy. A solid content plan gives all of your disciplines creative direction, streamlines resource, ensures messaging is consistent and works to enforce the role that each stakeholder (internal and external) plays in meeting online goals.

At the heart of content planning is a strong understanding of your target audience. By understanding the needs and motivations of your prospects and customers it will help you to create content that is in line with how your audience wants to consume it and therefore where to market that content to support search, website optimisation and social media objectives.

How customer insight and content supports these three channels is best reflected in the infographic below:

Starting with search, the information presented back to us when searching comes in a range of content types i.e. maps, images, video and shopping feeds (in Google’s case, this is called Universal Search). In turn, this means brands must create, optimise and market useful and engaging content that benefits both the target audience and supports SEO objectives.  In light of Google’s Panda update earlier this year, good quality, relevant and interesting content for the end user is more important than ever. Adopting old hat techniques such as keyword-stuffed press releases and articles, created purely for SEO purposes, might just bring you to Google’s attention…and not in a good way!

Content also has an integral role to play once visitors arrive at your website. A content driven approach to e-commerce helps create a richer and more rounded website experience, which in turn aids conversion rates and average order values. Strong imagery and video, for example, are proven to engage visitors and drive up sales. Marks and Spencer, with its pioneering ‘M&S TV’, has reportedly seen three times as many product views when supported with video and an average uplift in basket size of 23%.

Content is also vitally important in giving your brand a voice across your social media channels. Too many brands fall in to the trap of using social media to simply broadcast special offers and promotions. Content is the foundation of which a truly engaging social media experience is built and therefore how you can build a following by having your customers share your news, views and stories with their colleagues and peers.

This diagram reflects the interdependency between search, social media and content; one discipline cannot operate in isolation of the other two.

Practical steps to creating a content plan

So with content playing such a vital role in search, conversion rates and social media outreach, where should you start?

I recommend working from a central content plan as it helps to ensure consistent and clear messaging from each of your company’s communication channels and ensures any content output is aligned to your business objectives.

The first step to creating great content is to align all communication channels to work together. Holding regular content workshops involving all those responsible for creating content is a great way to achieve this. The objective of these workshops is to mine the business for all marketing plans across online and offline disciplines and brainstorm raw ideas, thoughts and materials.

You can then shape the resulting output into a comprehensive six-12 month content plan that cascades into all online communication channels, for example:

  • Content to support sales, such as buyers guides
  • Blog content
  • Emails / newsletters
  • On and offline PR
  • On and offline advertising, such as catalogues
  • In-store event ideas

This level of planning provides the necessary structure and formalising of responsibilities to maximise the value of the content created by all stakeholders.

The output is a month by month plan (it can be as simple as using an Excel spreadsheet) that details what content will be created, in what format, by whom and through which channels it will marketed and when. It sounds simple but I’m amazed at how many businesses we speak to are creating content in a totally disjointed manner meaning they fail to maximise its value to meeting digital marketing objectives.

Conclusion

Don’t fall into the trap of creating content purely for the purposes of gaming search engines. Really think about your customer and create content that is genuinely useful and engaging. Get all of your content creators in a room and plan, plan, plan. In turn, you’ll be rewarded with stronger search engine rankings, higher conversion rates and more fans and followers who feel a genuine connection to your brand.

Making sense of Facebook’s latest updates

Posted on by Greg Lee

Much has already been spoken about in the blogosphere about Facebook’s F8 conference last week, and the changes introduced, not least the Timeline feature.

We believe it is still far too early to draw definitive conclusions for what this means specifically for retail brands within Facebook, certainly in terms of how they organise and share their content and encourage people to do this on their behalf.

Why?  Well, to start with, an article on 16th Sept (before F8) by Paul Fabretti on Social Media Today suggests that while Facebook has generated huge followings (although he observes that in the top 20 ‘most followed’ within Facebook there are zero brands), engagement with these groups by ‘core fans’ is tiny.  The % of ‘core fans’ engaging with the top 20 is comparable to the % CTR one might expect from banner advertising…hardly a glowing endorsement of engagement.  Logic suggests therefore that the solution to poor engagement is ‘better’ content. This isn’t new news to anyone, and harder to deliver it seems.  Especially content that people want to share, to pass on.

Will the updates revealed at F8 make the delivery of ‘better’ content easier or more difficult, then?

Anecdotally at Leapfrogg International HQ(!), opinion is divided.  Some love the new layout and the freshness of Timeline, while others are concerned that if Facebook is starting to decide what constitutes a ‘top story’, rather than having posts fed through chronologically, it raises a question mark over posts that a user might previously have seen that now get missed.

Is there an element of information overload now – how many types of posts can anyone really look at, in different places on one page?  For brands, this seems a risk as well as an opportunity.

Ciaran Norris raises some interesting concerns in his article on Search Engine Land , as does Travis Pitman in Tnooz.  The launch of Gestures, offering the facility for people to share every song they listen to, every book they read or place they go to more easily than ever, could invite ‘stream fatigue’.  If Facebook’s new content structure means that brands are fighting for page real estate in the ticker section of the page with an increasing volume of information from friends, standing out from that ticker stream is going to be more and more difficult.  The thought that the ticker feed is simply ‘the current News Feed on steroids’ is valid.

One solution for brands may be to invest in sponsored areas of the pages; it cannot be a coincidence that within the refreshed content structure, the areas where Facebook generate revenue from brands remain larger, colourful and more impactful than the ticker feed.

At the same time, it seems more important than ever that brands and businesses ensure they have Facebook’s presence embedded within their own sites, to ensure it is as easy as possible for people visiting their sites can broadcast information back to Facebook as easily as possible.

In short, for brands and Facebook, it’s not ‘why?’, but ‘how?’  Our reason for this is simple; not only are more people (800m+ globally) registered, but recent data shows they spend more time there than on any other social media property;

 


Image source: Citi Investment Research and Analysis

Leapfrogg’s approach to social media (infographic)

Posted on by Lucy Freeborn

Social media is an integral part of your audience’s digital engagement with your brand. At Leapfrogg, we take a holistic approach to social media; our approach reflects the interdependency between search, social media and content; we believe that you cannot operate a successful digital marketing campaign in silos.

We advise our clients on the best channels by which to reach their audience by conducting comprehensive research; in short, how and where their prospects and customers spend their time online. Using this information, we develop a centralised content plan, which is also aligned to the greater marketing strategy. Having all departments (agency and client side) working to an agreed plan not only gives clear direction but also ensures that messaging remains consistent through all marketing channels, regardless of the channel your consumer prefers to engage with you via. This is essential to giving a retail brand a voice across social media channels that extends beyond special offers and promotions; it’s about offering a more compelling reason to follow that brand.

A centralised content plan also helps deliver the consistent experience that customers expect as they move between channels, something which is essential for retailers to get right but much easier said than done!

This approach is illustrated below with this rather wonderful infographic:Phase one: Insight & understanding
Creating a successful, engaging and compelling space for relationship building with your target market is only possible if you know who your target audience is, what they care about and how they like to communicate; and you measure that relationship accordingly. Taking time to understand your target audience feeds directly into phase two.

Phase two: Centralised content strategy, operation structure & clear objectives
A solid content strategy gives you creative direction, streamlines resources and ensures all messaging is consistent. This also allows you to engage with your target audience in the appropriate way and set clear objectives for your activity.

Phase three: Pool of clear results
Done well, content planning and social media can deliver brand awareness, customer engagement, ownership of search results, stronger relationships with the media and drive direct sales. Only by structuring your approach, execution and measurement will you be guaranteed to add value and deliver tangible business benefits.

An introduction to blogger networks

Posted on by Lucy Freeborn

At Leapfrogg we work with a multitude of bloggers across lots of different genres. One thing we’ve noticed crop up more and more is the number of blogs belonging to ‘blogger networks’; collectives of independent blogs managed by an umbrella publisher.

Blogger networks aren’t a new phenomenon, but they have definitely become more prominent with the emergence of the likes of Handpicked Media, Glam Media and now Mumsnet starting its own blogger network arm (Marketing Week, 7th July 2011). Most networks have some commercial aspect to them while others are more about promoting their blogs and social networking.

The real benefits to bloggers joining these networks are multiple. They can help build relationships with likeminded topic experts, help build traffic and revenue to their sites and provide often much needed support and resource around administration and commercial guidance.

However, the way in which we work with bloggers has to adapt along with the emergence of these blogger networks and bloggers overall becoming more financially driven. Essentially, it makes everyone’s jobs a little bit easier; agencies can build relationships with publishers that understand the creative and commercial needs of their clients and bloggers get a gatekeeper to provide them with administrative and commercial support.

It will, however, require some budget. As the gatekeepers to these blogs, the networks will co-ordinate creative briefs that work for their bloggers, identify who would be interested in a particular project, handle all the administration and ultimately ensure the blogs make some money out of the activity; whilst also ensuring an income for their services.

So far we’ve tipped our toes in the water by running lower level giveaway campaigns with Handpicked Media – we’re yet to test out a full blown campaign but it is definitely something we are looking to trial with our clients.

Optimising for social signals

Posted on by Ben Adam

social buttons

Although social content sharing has been around for some time now, only recently has the sharing of content had a direct impact on a pages ranking in Google or Bing. It is becoming ever more important to ensure customers are encouraged to tweet, share, like and now +1 your products or news stories.

The most popular and most significant social influencers on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are:

  • Tweets
  • Facebook likes and shares
  • Google’s +1

What are the benefits?

Google and Bing have both stated that social signals have a direct effect on rankings. Tweets already have been shown to aid rankings and there is an increasingly need for them to be considered as an additional form a link building. Sites should be aiming to get pages mentioned in tweets by authoritative people as you would aim to gain links from authoritative websites.

Twitter

If an article is retweeted or referenced in Twitter, Bing will add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. However, it currently carries more weight in Bing Social Search. Google also use it as a signal in both their organic and news rankings. However, only in the last couple of days there have been reports of Google placing less emphasis on Twitter and removing the ‘real time’ filter from the search options on the left hand side of the page. It remains to be seen if this is temporary or a more permanent move, perhaps to drive users towards Google+ and +1.

Facebook likes and share

For links shared within Facebook, either through personal walls or fan pages Bing has a close relationship with Facebook and currently looks at links shared that are marked as “Everyone,” and links shared from Facebook fan pages. Google treat links shared on Facebook fan pages the same as it treats tweeted links but has no personal wall data from Facebook.

Facebook “send” is more personalised recommendation and endorsement; earning Facebook shares currently will not directly boost your rankings (though it may have positive effects that indirectly promote links, tweets and other signals Google may use as suggested by Matt Peters).

Google +1

Google has been indicating right from the start that +1s are going to influence search results. Once fully rolled out in the UK, +1s, as well as being  used as a ranking factor, are also going to  impact both paid and natural CTRs from SERPs, as +1s appear alongside the search result.

Adding buttons to your site

Incorporating buttons into your site design is no simple task; there is an important balance between avoiding clutter and promoting the share buttons.

Generally the most popular method for implementing social buttons is a “Catchall service” such as “addthis”. Although the catchall can help prevent cluttering of your pages and avoid user confusion, they lack the call to action and impact of big bold buttons. They also don’t show the number of shares that may encourage greater user interaction.

What buttons should be included?

To avoid cluttering your pages and confusing customers only buttons that you see as significant use should be included, ideally limiting them to 3. Look closely at where your current traffic is coming from and consider your customer demographic before choosing the buttons to add.

What pages?

Social buttons are not relevant to all pages of the site and should not simply be replicated across every page. There are a variety of ways that the social sharing buttons should be incorporated into the site such as:

  • Product detail pages
  • Blog posts and news articles
  • Category level pages
  • Thank you pages
  • Wish lists

Where?

It is important that when placing social buttons there is a balance between content and promotion. We don’t want to the buttons to draw attention from any other goals but do want them to be simple to find. Consider containing within one widget and above the fold. Also add secondary buttons to the foot of long pages such as articles and posts.

Comment: Dolce & Gabbana enables access to its entire digital strategy from one place

Posted on by Lucy Freeborn

Luxury Daily reported recently about Dolce & Gabbana attempting to interact with consumers by enabling them to access its entire digital strategy from one place. Dolce & Gabbana is offering links to its mobile applications, social media pages, e-commerce site and blog in its “Follow Us” tab on Facebook.

Offering up all communication channels in one place could potentially introduce customers to mediums that they did not know existed, as well as emphasise the main pathways of communication between consumers and the brand.

According to Luxury Daily, some may argue that this over-saturation of social media could look desperate for a luxury brand, or that Dolce & Gabbana is diluting itself by appearing on too many low-end channels. However, says Luxury Daily, experts believe that since most consumers typically have one or two favourite communication channels, having information on different sources can help to engage with as many fans as possible.

The latter statement seems more just, as letting consumers choose how they can engage surely strengthens the brand engagement and allows the brand to tailor its messaging to its customers. Brands can also strengthen their vertical sector engagement when tailoring output for different channels. Ultimately, this will also ensure better data capture of customer preferences.

At Leapfrogg, we take a holistic approach to social media. Our approach reflects the interdependency between search, social media and content; we advocate that one discipline cannot operate in isolation of the other two.

We advise our clients on the best channels to reach their audience through and ensure all output ties back to a content plan aligned to the greater marketing strategy. Having all departments working to an agreed plan not only gives clear direction but also ensures that your messaging remains consistent through all channels, regardless of which channel your consumer prefers to engage with you through.

And don’t forget, quality, relevance and timeliness of content is absolutely central to social media engagement. For us, content very much remains king!

How not to waste your time marketing on social media

Posted on by Lucy Freeborn

How often have you ‘liked’ a brand or product on Facebook never to visit the page or hear from the brand again? Getting a company account set up on Facebook and has become the standard first step in a brand’s social media outreach. However, there are still an awful lot of businesses who haven’t taken a step back and looked at the bigger picture, set objectives for this activity, or dovetailed their social media plan into the wider marketing strategy. They often haven’t thought through their content strategy (if they even have one!) or learnt how to engage with their target audience through these mediums.

Too often companies dive straight in, relying on random status updates as their social media strategy. Getting thousands of ‘likes’ on Facebook is only half the battle – creating an engaging and compelling space for those who like what your brand is doing and how you are building a relationship with them, is actually a much better measure of successful social media outreach.

Essentially, poor engagement and irrelevant content will put people off your brand. Too much (and too little!) communication and overtly ‘sales-y’ content will alienate your fans. Here are a few tips on how to successfully engage with your audience:

  • Encourage your customers to share their experiences – ensure you have this capability on any great deal pages
  • Provide interesting and useful content worth reading! This will encourage your fans to respond to you and share the content with their friends
  • Be engaging and helpful with your fans – always respond through the medium they contacted you on
  • Avoid too much direct marketing in your content as this will put people off
  • Ensure you always enable the click through from a specific deal to the correct page on your site
  • Make your profile unique- it goes without saying that standing out will make you memorable! Try apps and competitions to engage your fans
  • Most importantly, don’t make social media a silo strategy for your company. Use it to compliment your wider strategic outreach and content plans

In regards to the general consumer, they often don’t care a great deal about the actual brand; they care about the product or service you offer and their relationship with you. They will often ‘like’ their favourite brands on Facebook or follow them on Twitter to receive discounts, deals and offers.

However, Social Media Today reported that according to a recent survey, the reason a luxury consumer engages with his or her favourite brand via social media is vastly different than those of the general population.  Consumers in the US earning at least $200,000 a year, don’t care so much about discounts and deals, they follow their favourite brands for the simple reason they love the brand or have an affinity for it.

Regardless of the market, content should still be at the heart of all activity!

Facebook launches ‘Studio’ to showcase the best in social media campaigns

Posted on by Lucy Freeborn

Last week, Facebook launched a brand new website aimed at crediting the best marketing campaigns executed across its vast social platform. The concept for Facebook Studio is simple: advertisers and marketers from around the world submit their campaigns to the site and users ‘like’ the ones they think are best. Once a campaign has received enough votes it will enter the Spotlight section of the site where it will be judged by a professional panel of creative directors from leading agencies around the world.

As well as crediting the best campaigns on Facebook, the site also aims to inspire and teach marketers how to get the most from their Facebook marketing activity. The site includes information, tutorials and FAQs on how brands can get the most from Facebook’s functionality.

What it tells us about Facebook

As well as being an extremely useful resource for figuring out how to remove page admins, update URLs and everything else you might need to do on Facebook, the site also tells us a lot about Facebook’s plans for the future.

For the last few months, Mark Zuckerberg and co have been developing ways to make it easier for brands to interact with customers on the site. Earlier this year, Sponsored Stories was launched, which allows brands to run PPC adverts containing information about how individual user’s friends have interacted or engaged with the brand. Facebook also launched mobile and local deals, which have made it easier for businesses to gain a mobile presence on the site.

Learning from the site

From a retailers perspective, the site features some amazing examples of great work that creative geniuses across the globe have contributed. My personal favourites are the 1Goal campaign and the BMW X3 mash up. Although some of the campaigns may be too ambitious for smaller brands to attempt, Facebook Studios lets everyone learn a great deal about why they are successful. So you can apply the same principles of success to your smaller campaign which might hopefully make your campaign a lot bigger than you’d originally planned!