Category Archives: Social media

Online retailers – New Twitter is your new best friend

Posted on by Rosie Freshwater

The twitterati are awash with excitement about ‘NEW TWITTER’, which is being rolled out as we speak. Although I am not seeing it yet, I have had a sneak look here and I have to say I think it will be a big bonus for online retailers.

This is because the new layout has two columns; the left hand side remains the normal Twitter stream (but prettier and with extra functionality) and the right hand side is now a details pane that will show extended information about the author or subject of a tweet you click on. This is a bonus as it will also show any imagery, photos or video that is attached or embedded in a tweet without the reader having to click on a link and visit a 3rd party site, such as Flickr or YouTube.

This new details pane will allow retailers to share great images and videos of products in a fashion that does not require visitors to click away from their twitter stream. This can only enhance the levels of engagement as we all know that if customers see gorgeous product images and video they are much more likely to buy.

You may think “I am not on Twitter so this won’t affect me”, however if you have great images and videos of your products placed on 3rd party websites, such as YouTube and Flickr, then the new Twitter layout will allow your prospects and customers to share visual information about your products with greater ease and therefore to a wider audience.

This is just another reason why having top quality, visual assets, such as product images and video is so important. Many purchase decisions are emotional and there is nothing better than imagery to provoke a positive response. With social media becoming more and more visual (not to mention the recent advanced google search options), retailers who fail to underpin their online strategy with strong, shareable digital assets will fall behind those who do.

Networking with the media

Posted on by Lucy Freeborn

Building good relationships with journalists and contacts in the media is key to what we do in the social media and content team here at Leapfrogg. Understanding what journalists are looking for in a story makes our work more effective as we can come up with creative content that is more likely to be featured in relevant publications, particularly online. Working in partnership with our key media and blog contacts helps our clients benefit from PR exposure and enhanced SEO benefit via the links we create.

I try to attend as many networking and media events as possible; often they are a great way to break the ice with journalists and can be really beneficial for developing and establishing contacts. Last week I was invited to PR News Wire’s Meet the Media evening at the Gherkin in London. Set in a stunning venue on the very top floor of the building, the event provided a chance for PR professionals from a variety of backgrounds to exchange ideas and contacts.

Ruth Barnett from Sky News gave a great presentation on how the journalists at Sky use social media to enhance their coverage. Part of Ruth’s presentation included a video which showed how Sky had put together their coverage of the day Gordon Brown resigned as Prime Minister back in May. It was fascinating to see how one of the most established media outlets in the world had used social media to report on one of the biggest news stories of the year.

The evening strongly reinforced the argument that social media is now commonly accepted as an effective and authoritative way to share and discover news as it happens. Brands that don’t embrace it will fall behind as journalists and media outlets now expect public figures and businesses to be present, and to communicate, through social media in a real time.

At Leapfrogg, we take it for granted that our clients understand the importance of digital strategies and social media. But among the professionals attending the event it was interesting to see the divide between those who had a good knowledge of how to use digital marketing as part of their communications strategy and those that didn’t. I believe the future has already arrived in the sense that social media isn’t something new anymore, but instead the accepted way of doing things. PR and marketing executives who don’t build social media into holistic digital marketing strategies will fall behind very quickly.

A quick guide to new features on LinkedIn

Posted on by Lucy Freeborn

At the end of last month, social network LinkedIn rolled out some fairly major changes with regards to how the site’s groups feature works. LinkedIn is a really useful tool for developing your career; whether it’s for networking, sourcing new employees, or quickly finding out the answer to a difficult question. Since the groups feature was introduced last August it has proved an invaluable tool for networking with industry peers and keeping up with the latest news in your sector.

So what have they changed? Well first of all, conversations threads are a lot easier to follow; when group members post links to external pages they appear as they do in the news stream on the home page. This allows you to view important information much faster – essential if you’re trying to find something quickly and easily.

The success of Facebook’s ‘like’ button has inspired LinkedIn to add a similar feature. So users can find the most popular and useful content, everyone has the chance to vote on whether they ‘like’ the information that’s been contributed. This saves time and lets everyone find the most important content without having to search through the irrelevant stuff.

The biggest change LinkedIn has made, and arguably the most exciting, is the profiling of the most influential users in each group. Previously, you needed to scroll through all of the conversations to find out who posted the best content. That has all changed, as LinkedIn now does the leg work for you by rating the top influencers.

Now users can find out who the most influential members are straight away and keep up to date with what they are contributing. The new changes let you choose to receive email updates when individual members post comments or ‘like’ a piece of content.

We are always preaching to clients about how useful LinkedIn groups are for discovering news and insight from industry peers. The changes make it a lot easier to find new content; but more importantly they let you find out who is regularly posting it.

Once you discover who is posting really good content make sure you follow them; find out if they have a blog (most LinkedIn users have links to their blogs or websites on their profile), and find their Twitter details (again these are usually found on the user’s profile page).

Once you are following them start engaging; ask them questions, offer advice and get involved! LinkedIn selects the most influential users based on the amount they post and the number responses their posts get. So start posting interesting and useful links and you too could become a top influencer!

My first blog post – ‘hello’ and a look at Nike’s Football Facebook campaign

Posted on by Lucy Freeborn

Hi, I’m James one of newest members of the Leapfrogg team. I’m originally from Brighton, although I lived and studied in Bristol for a couple of years, before the lure of sea air and lack of cider drinking farmers was too much for me and returned to the seaside back in 2008.

My role at Leapfrogg is as Digital Marketing Trainee, which I’m really excited about since I have always been interested in social media, digital marketing and frogs…well, maybe not so much the latter.

The last month or two has somehow flown by, as quickly as my notes have mounted, however I’ve learned an awful lot about a lot of things, in particular web optimisation, paid search, copy writing and social media. This has been a really interesting inception to agency life, with the whole team making me feel very welcome and showing me around.

For my first post on the Froggblog I thought I’d write about the Nike Football Facebook campaign and what we can learn from its success.

When Facebook first started to get popular back in 2007, the only real commercial representation on the site was from music promoters and dodgy students offering dissertation ‘writing’ services. As we all know, with the massive increased popularity of the site (Facebook just overtook Yahoo in the US for regular visitors) many brands, particularly those with a youth oriented audience, have flooded to the site to promote themselves. Obviously some have done a better job than others and in my view Nike have done a better job than pretty much everyone else.

Nike Football’s fan page is certainly the best one I’ve seen on Facebook. The page has been spruced up with fancy bits of FBML (Facebook’s version of HTML) and looks nothing like a traditional default fan page.

It is often said that social media is a great way to interact and engage with your consumers – Nike has taken this interaction to a whole new level. The page features a training section which contains videos that users subscribe to. The videos featuring training tips and sessions with some of Nike’s superstars, such as Liverpool FC’s Fernando Torres. They import snazzy graphics and are professionally executed, which you would expect from a global brand.

What makes these videos so successful is the content they feature is genuinely worth something to the user. What makes the videos so effective for Nike is that they are able to cram as much of their branding in as possible and also add some less-than-subtle product placements that they could never get away with on TV or offline.

As well as the training videos, the page contains regular status updates on the football issues of the day; these updates receive hundreds of comments and ‘likes’ from Nike fans all across the world – all of which helps to increase awareness though Facebook’s news stream. Nike have also launched an IPhone App which updates users Facebook accounts about how far through the training schedule they’ve got.

So what can your brand learn from Nike? Obviously not everyone has the resources or budget that Nike does, however, that doesn’t mean you can’t create useful and engaging content and universally spread it (virally) via Facebook.

At the core of the Nike Football’s page success is the simple idea of offering content that is really useful and valuable to the user and allowing the content to spread so quickly. Instead of flashy training videos with millionaire superstar footballers, a cookery company, for example, could offer simple yet effective cooking tips in videos on the Facebook page. If the content is useful enough for the user it will spread and more and more people will find out about your brand.

Another important point to take from the Nike campaign is about scheduling your content. Their training videos are set up for a week-by-week programme; they could have been condensed into one longer video but that means users would have no reason to come back so by creating a schedule the user becomes far more engaged.

I am really looking forward to getting involved with similarly successful Facebook campaigns for many of our clients here at Leapfrogg; especially in the luxury retail market.

A beginners guide to: real time search (part 2)

Posted on by admin

Last time I introduced you to the concept of real-time search. In this second installment I look at how you need to adapt your search marketing efforts to take full advantage of this potentially game-changing development. Although it’s early days for real-time search all the signs are that it will become an increasingly important part of how search engines deliver highly relevant and newsworthy information to users. Therefore, the winners will be those online marketers that adapt early.

I’m going to begin by looking at the sources search engines use to populate their real-time search results because naturally that leads to the activities you need to incorporate into your online strategy.

While Bing currently concentrates on Twitter as its primary source of real-time information, Google includes sources such as Google News links, Google Blog Search links, Google Buzz posts, as well as Jaiku, FriendFeed, Identi.ca, MySpace and Facebook fan page updates.

With most, if not all of these sites having a social element to them, the introduction of real time search reinforces the importance of a well-thought out content and social media strategy to complement ‘traditional’ SEO efforts. On this basis, I recommend you consider the following action points, not only to take advantage of real-time search, but also to widen your reach and engage directly with your target audience:

  • Set up accounts or profiles across the above websites even if you do not plan on using them quite yet. By doing so, you are at least taking ownership of those accounts under your brand name (before somebody else does!)
  • If you are going to use one social network to take advantage of real time search in the short term, choose Twitter and establish a strategy for its use (assuming it is relevant to your target audience)
  • Develop a robust content strategy. Success in social media, and therefore real-time search, is dictated by the quality and relevancy of the information you publish whether this is 140 character tweet or a video masterpiece. To help…
  • …invest in buzz monitoring software. Not only can you monitor where your brand name is being mentioned online but you can also monitor hot topics to see if they are relevant to your brand or line of business. This in turn will help you shape the content you create and in what format. Getting involved in the most newsworthy conversations makes it more likely you will gain visibility in the search results
  • Once you have created relevant content consider the most appropriate channels by which it can be pushed out. For example, press releases are likely to feature in Google News so ensure you create and distribute them using the right tools when appropriate
  • Get blogging; consider how you can publish regular blog posts relevant to your business / industry. The steady stream of fresh, newsworthy content, particularly in response to the major changes / events/ developments in your market place will, in time, ensure your target audience favours you as a source of up to date and valuable information. Search engines may well begin to so the same
  • Ensure that all of the above is keyword driven. Integrate targeted keywords into your content, utilising hashtags where relevant

The efforts described above will inevitably require additional internal resource. However, the relationship between search, social media and content demands that brands take a more holistic approach to their search engine optimisation efforts. With social media activity having an increasing influence on search engine performance brands cannot afford to sit on the sidelines of social media.

Conclusion

In recent months I’ve introduced you to the latest developments shaping how search engines display their results. What I hope this highlights is that search engines are in a constant state of flux as they seek to provide the most relevant results to their users.

What we must do in instances such as these is to remain clear-headed and focused on making sure that the innovations in question do not catch us out. We must therefore be innovative ourselves. Change can be good as long as you know how to tackle it. With that in mind, keep your eyes peeled for regular updates and advice.

Digital marketing benchmarking report for premium home and garden retailers

Posted on by Ben Potter

Over the course of 2010, Leapfrogg is conducting a series of surveys investigating premium retailers’ use of, and attitudes, towards digital marketing. We are looking at a number of very specific niche markets beginning with home and garden. Further surveys will look at premium fashion, health and beauty, and food and wine.

This first survey was sent to 80 premium home and garden retailers with just over a quarter taking part. Respondents included well recognised high street brands and smaller retailers.

The full report is available to download here. Below we have included some of the key findings:

Use of marketing channels

The top five online marketing channels being ‘heavily’ or ‘partially’ used by premium home and garden retailers are articles and press releases (75%), email marketing (67%), search engine optimisation (67%), paid search (66%) and voucher codes (48%).

Respondents are ‘just getting started’ with social networking (38%), micro-blogging i.e. Twitter (33%), blogging (30%) and involvement in forums and communities (25%).

Interestingly, respondents have ‘no intention of becoming involved’ in the creation of audio (55%) or video content (35%), mobile marketing (33%) and shopping/comparison engines (33%). And although a number of retailers are adopting the use of voucher codes, a further 33% have no intention of using them.

It is suggested that premium home and garden retailers take the time to investigate the opportunities presented by video and mobile in particular. Video and the use of mobile technology to access the Internet, read product reviews and download coupons/vouchers are experiencing significant growth with consumers.

Importance of marketing channels

The top five online channels that are considered most important to the success of the business are search engine optimisation (76%), email marketing (50%), articles and press releases (33%), paid search (30%) and reputation management (25%).

The areas that are felt to be unimportant are voucher codes (33%), social networking (30%), audio (27%), mobile marketing (24%) and shopping and comparison sites (24%).

Understandably, premium brands may feel the use of voucher codes ‘cheapens’ their offering. However, Leapfrogg would consider it a concern that so few companies rate the importance of social networking and mobile marketing, in particular.

Channel rating according to return on investment (ROI)

The key channels that are claimed to deliver return on investment are search engine optimisation (SEO), email marketing, and articles and press releases.

In respect of the other 13 online channels the majority view is that the return on investment is indifferent.  Social networking is perceived to have a very poor return on investment by one quarter of the respondents, suggesting that premium home and garden retailers have not yet implemented appropriate systems to measure their social media marketing efforts with accuracy and in line with business goals.

Channel resource plans

The online activities where resource is being increased in 2010, compared to 2009, are social networking (65%), email marketing (60%), micro-blogging (58%), SEO (57%), activity in forums and communities (43%) and blogging (44%).

Plans to increase resource in social networking is interesting when it is considered that a quarter of respondents perceived social networking to have a very poor return on investment, whilst a lack of internal resource (see later section) was also deemed a significant barrier to the success of social media efforts. It is therefore suggested that premium home and garden retailers need to carefully consider objectives from social media activity, set up appropriate systems to measure performance and ensure adequate levels of in-house resource are dedicated to managing social media effectively.

Multi-channel marketing

Results indicate that respondents combine more traditional online activities, such as SEO, PPC and email when running multi-channel campaigns. Social media and blogging also represent popular channels, yet integrating mobile is very low, despite consumers growing use of smart phone technology to access the Internet.

It is recommended that premium home and garden retailers consider all the ‘touch points’ between brand and consumer and implement multi-channel marketing campaigns that ensure a consistent offering and message is present across all of them.

Management of marketing channels

Marketing is the department responsible for managing all online activities except PR, of which there is either a dedicated department or it is outsourced.  IT is responsible for search engine optimisation (SEO) in just over one third of the retailers who responded, which might suggest it is viewed as a technical discipline as opposed to a marketing activity.

Knowledge of customers

Generally, premium home and garden retailers feel that they need to know more about the behaviour of their customers online. 82% do not know how their customers behave on social networks and 66% do not know what their customers are saying about their brand online.

The latter is a particular point of interest as consumers are increasingly willing, and easily able, to share their thoughts with hundreds, possibly thousands of others through blogs, forums, reviews sites and social networks. In turn, purchasing decisions are heavily influenced by the positive and negative reviews a retailer may receive online. It is therefore suggested respondents investigate the use of buzz monitoring tools to quickly identify the conversations happening around their brand and products.

55% feel informed about their customer’s behaviour on their website suggesting respondents have implemented, and are using analytical tools to good effect. However, 45% appear not to be using tools, such as Google Analytics, to great effect therefore limiting the opportunity to make informed decisions on optimising site performance.

Knowledge of search engine ranking factors

Premium home and garden retailers rate keyword placement (67%), website architecture (57%), Meta tags (55%), the user experience (48%) and external links (43%) as crucial to achieving high search engine rankings. Rich media content and blogging were considered by the majority as important but not crucial to improving search engine rankings.

A quarter of respondents were unsure of the impact on search engine rankings of choice of technology and social media activity. Concerning the latter, it is recommended respondents investigate the relationship between search and social media as these channels cannot, and should not, operate in isolation of one another.

Goal setting

Half of premium home and garden retailers used past performance as a benchmark for setting goals for digital marketing activity along with basing predictions on financial goals.

One third of respondents do not currently set goals for digital marketing activity. It is highly recommended that premium home and garden retailers work to establish objectives using SMART methodology to ensure there is direction and focus for digital marketing activity. In addition, appropriate tools and processes should be put in place to measure goals accurately.

Ability to track goals accurately

Respondents rated their ability to track search engine rankings (57%), online conversions (48%), email marketing performance (47%), behaviour of site visitors (35%) and affiliate marketing (33%) as good.

Areas not being tracked accurately include conversions from social media activity (74%), mobile marketing (73%) and customer lifetime value (71%).

59% do not currently track overall return on investment from digital marketing activity.

This would indicate there is still a great deal of progress to be made in the area of measurement. Retailers should be implementing the appropriate tools and processes to measure the impact of each online channel. Better tracking will not only enable return on investment to be calculated from each channel but also provide invaluable data for forecasting and developing future strategies.

Agency relationships

The split between managing work in-house and the use of external agencies is 50:50 with a slight preference for conducting more of the work in-house but using specialist agencies where needed. Those that use external resources use specialist SEO agencies, full service digital agencies, web designers, affiliate marketing and PR companies.

Premium home and garden retailers rated the ability to deliver results (95%) as the most important factor when working with an agency. Specific knowledge of the customers’ market (76%), and having open lines of communication (67%) also rated particularly highly.

Premium home and garden retailers believe it is ‘crucial’ that an online agency has knowledge of the clients’ target audience (80%), their key performance indicators (73%) and knowledge of the business plan (53%). Yet only 40% believe an agency should have knowledge of the clients’ offline marketing strategy (40%).  This indicates that premium home and garden retailers need to better communicate offline activity with their agencies therefore ensuring a consistent, and properly integrated online/offline marketing strategy.

Barriers to success

The barriers that prevent premium home and garden retailers from maximising their online marketing efforts are lack of internal resource, lack of budget and a lack of understanding.  Board approval and not having an appropriate measurement tool are also cited as significant barriers.

The ‘lack of internal resource’ is of particular interest as a high number of companies choose to manage digital marketing in-house yet do not appear to possess the necessary capacity to do so to maximum effect.

Download the full report here. If you would like to discuss any aspect of the report findings, please get in touch. And remember to keep a look out for future reports covering premium fashion, health and beauty, and food and wine.

Infographic – the online retail wheel of fortune

Posted on by Rosie Freshwater

With ever-increasing competition online and the demand to deliver a multi-channel shopping experience, online retailers have a never ending list of actions they need to take in implementing a successful digital marketing strategy.

Add to that the growing sophistication in how search engines display their results; the introduction of blended search, personalised search, social search and real-time search demand a much more holistic approach to search engine optimisation (SEO); an approach that combines traditional activities, such as keyword selection and link building, with more contemporary tactics in social media and content marketing.

A successful online retail strategy is therefore made up of many parts that are continually growing and repeating throughout the customer buying cycle. This can at times be overwhelming as retailers struggle to find the resource, time and skills to succeed in every necessary area.

Understanding this, we thought we would lend a helping hand to online retailers by creating the infographic to end all infographics; the online retail wheel of fortune. This is a graphical representation of the main elements to be incorporated into your online strategy to maximise success.

And here it is! Now being rather large, and very detailed, you will need to download the pdf version to digest it fully, which you can access by clicking here.

As you will see we have split our graphic into four main sections, representing key stages of the customer buying cycle as follows:

Reach
Covering the top line projects and tactics aimed at maximising your online exposure, therefore enabling you to connect with as many prospects as possible, which in turn drives more of the right traffic to your website.

Engage
The tools and techniques you can use to ‘talk’ to your audience once you have found them.

Convert
How to turn those engaged prospects into customers by optimising the user experience on your site, for example.

Retain
The actions you need to take to encourage repeat sales and develop advocates of your brand.

For each key stage of the buying cycle, we have detailed areas of attack, top level projects, specific actions within those  projects and some of the key benefits you will experience. Start with ‘reach’ before working your way out and then around to the next stage.

We realise it is a lot to take in…but this should also highlight just how much is involved in researching, planning and implementing an integrated digital marketing strategy for retailers.

We’d love to hear from you with your comments.

A beginners guide to: real time search (part 1)

Posted on by admin

In my recent quest to introduce you to the latest developments shaping how search engines display their results I have already talked about personalised search and social search. This time, I’m turning my attention to perhaps the most exciting (and potentially game-changing) development; real-time search.

What is real time search?

First off, ‘real time’ refers to something that occurs immediately. In the online world, the most obvious example of where content is published in real-time is Twitter. Compare how long it takes to write and publish a tweet compared to say, a blog post. With the latter, it takes minutes, hours or possibly days to research, write and publish an article to a blog. With Twitter on the other hand, content is written, published and visible within seconds.

The benefits of real-time information from sources, such as Twitter, have not been lost on the major search engines. In recent months, both Google and Bing announced agreements with Twitter to include tweets (real-time data) in their search results.

This means that for certain searches carried out on Google or Bing, users will be presented with search results that contain information published just minutes, or even seconds ago. This is very different to how search engines traditionally display their results where there is a reliance on spidering content, storing it in a database and then presenting it back to searchers. This process takes time meaning information can be out of date quickly.

How are results featured?

There is a difference between the two search engines and their integration of real time results into their respective search engine results pages (SERP’s). If a user wants to view Bing’s real time results they go to www.bing.com/twitter. However, Google is different in that real time information is incorporated right into its normal search results, and often at the top of the page.

It is important to note that you won’t see real time results on Google for every search you carry out. Real time search is only triggered if Google believes information in real-time will be seen as valuable to searchers. A great example is the recent volcanic eruptions in Iceland. Searchers want the latest information on what is happening. They cannot wait for Google to spider content in the traditional fashion (although Google is pretty quick at doing so these days). Instead, searchers want the very latest news as it happens.

Check out the screenshot below for an example:


As you can see, Google considers the volcanic eruptions to be a “hot topic” (I imagine all those people stuck in foreign climes unable to get home would agree!) due to the mass spike in information being published online. Therefore, in the “Latest results for volcano news” section you can see a scroll of real-time information, from sources such as the Guardian and most notably Twitter.

Why has real time search been introduced?

In theory, real time search means that both Bing and Google can provide their users with the most up-to-date information around a search query, therefore increasing the relevance and usefulness of their search results.

It means that when searching for information on key events, such as the Icelandic volcano, users can see what happened minutes or even seconds ago. And this information is present right where searchers want it to be; incorporated into the search experience.

This is obviously fantastic for accessing news as it happens but what about the impact on brands. If, as expected, real-time search continues to move beyond news related items to be more widespread, a disgruntled customer venting their anger on Twitter, may not only be seen by their followers on this specific social network but their tweet may also feature in Google’s actual search results…and all in real-time!

Next time, I’ll be looking at this issue in more detail, as well as the other means by which real-time search impacts your digital marketing efforts. Until then…

The outnet designer sale fail

Posted on by admin

Please note, this post was written by Catherine Pryce before she left the company.

Social media done properly can increase brand advocates (fans and followers), sales and brand visibility. However, when a social media campaign backfires it can leave a bitter taste with prospects and customers for a long time after, therefore having a potentially damaging affect on the brand.

Since hearing about the ‘Outnet £1 designer sale’ I have been watching with intrigue how this will pan out. Working in social media one can become both cynical and fascinated in brands and their efforts in social media. For example, I am a fan of Harrods (despite not being able to invest in much more than a new potato in the shop) because their Facebook fan page is well run, they have dynamic campaigns and it’s always good to be armed with a case study and examples when delivering training to my clients.

I can’t even remember where I first saw the Outnet campaign mentioned, but I signed up for the newsletter, had a mooch around the site and mentally noted that today was the day. Not being the most cutting edge fashionista (you try and get size 9 feet into Vivienne Westwood pumps!); I followed the progress of this campaign to see how it would be executed (honest boss!).

Which takes me to my first shot of the server fail.

With much hype and marketing activity leading up to this key date, it should have given the marketing/IT department ample time to prepare for such an event when increases in traffic to the website is surely a given. From a distance I can only speculate that they simply do not have the bandwidth to cope with the massive influx of traffic. Whilst you can’t just ‘move servers’ on the day (DNS settings, etc need to be changed), there are options such as speaking to your hosts in advance, increasing bandwidth or worse case scenario, changing hosts well before the event if they cannot accommodate the additional bandwidth.

Due to this basic error, hundreds, possibly thousands of expectant customers are unable to access the website. The result; well by 10.00am there is already an “Anti” Facebook group; ‘the Outnet stole my Friday’.

And much discussion on Twitter (#outnet) with wails of frustration from women that had gone as far as taking a day off work to bag a…er… bag!

I had not heard of the Outnet before but I certainly think that a lot of people will have heard of it now…unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. I will revisit this and look at the sentiment surrounding the campaign later on. But in the meantime, I think it is fair to say if the purpose of the campaign was to raise positive awareness this has been a massive fail.

This smacks of a rather ‘gung-ho’ attitude to marketing, and social media in particular; an approach which is dangerous to say the least – the frustration that many women have experienced from this will not be easily forgotten. Potential sales will be quashed by a bad user experience…it’s the same as a bad experience in a shop with sales staff or products. Word of mouth travels fast, especially when it comes to social media.
And all of this, from email, faulty servers, to a Facebook group and me writing this blog happened before 10.30 am this morning!

So, what can brands learn from this?

Well, most importantly, be prepared. From inception to execution every possible scenario needs to be considered. What happened this morning had the potential to be a massive success in regards to awareness, but it seems to the website was ill-prepared to handle the influx in traffic so it fell over. So before embarking on mass promotions of this kind, companies must plan for expected increases in traffic and ensure they have the appropriate server capacity well in advance. And then if there are issues, at least put up a 404 error page to explain what is going on.

And if things really do go as badly as seemingly they are for the Outnet, be prepared to communicate with the community through appropriate social media channels, such as Twitter, as well as a blog post and press release; all with the aim of openly apologising for mistakes made and offering alternatives, such as another day when the sale will be held.

So far I have seen nothing from their HQ but promotion. Social media and marketing needs to be two ways, a crisis PR package needs to be in place for moments like this. If you promise the earth, you need to deliver it. Therefore, have your staff prepped not only to deal with the influx of purchases, but to be monitoring social media and equipped to respond to people dissatisfied with their experience.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this one so stay tuned for further developments.