#MarketingTitbits – Videos on Instgram, Kanye’s Marketing Lessons and free fonts

Instagram gets videos
For those of you that use Instagram, you’ll be interested to know that the photo sharing platform launched its new video feature on Friday. Surely prompted by the recent success of Vine, users now have the ability to create a video of 3-15 seconds in length and upload it to their Instagram page. Predictably, the majority have taken to uploading the usual videos of themselves and their surroundings; however, some brands have uploaded videos that reveal just how intuitive and beautiful the new video feature can be.  Here are our favourites:


Kanye West – a 21st century marketing guru?

We laughed when we saw this last week. Fresh from achieving his first no.1 album in the UK since 2007 and becoming a father, Kanye West still had time to pass on some key marketing and business advice to anyone that was listening. The US rapper has never been short on confidence and his interview with the New York Times did nothing to suggest fatherhood has humbled him. Take his statement: “I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means.” Whilst he might have some way to go before his impact on society reaches the global levels Jobs’ has, there were a number of marketing and business lessons that Kanye passed on that SMEs could take on board:

  1. Authenticity and consistency
  2. Emulate titans, but don’t compare yourself to them
  3. Are you the top performer in your field? The rules might be different

To read the full article click here.


Free Fonts

For the design-minded of you out there, do you ever get board of the same old fonts? If, like us, you are always on the lookout for some interesting new fonts to liven up your marketing communications, you might be interested in the following sites, where you can download fonts for free. Here are 4 to check out:

We look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.

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#MarketingTitbits – Marketing Lessons From Mourinho, Pinterest for SMEs and a ‘video puzzle’!

1. How small business can use PinterestIf you haven’t heard about Pinterest by now, it is surely only a matter of time. We brought this great social media tool to your attention over a year ago now and since then it has gone from strength to strength, moving away from its humble beginnings as an American housewives’ favourite to a global social media powerhouse attracting the attention of all the big brands.

As of February, the site had over 25 million users and companies with Facebook and Pinterest brand pages report that Pinterest followers spend up to 15 times more time on their page than Facebook followers.

Pinterest is not only for the big brands and corporates though. SMEs can also benefit greatly from getting to grips with the platform.

To help you get started, we found this simple, easy to understand article on Forbes.com that gives small businesses a great start point.

2. 5 marketing lessons from Jose Mourinho

We found this interesting article in marketing magazine last week that gave some thought as to what marketers can learn from one of the world’s most high-profile and charismatic managers.

They identified 5 key lessons that all marketers should bear in mind when marketing their organisation:

Don’t be afraid to polarize opinion
Embrace the ‘siege mentality’
Protect your team
Who cares the most wins (sometimes)
Rules are for breaking

Find out how you can apply these principles by clicking here.

3. Got 4 iPhones and want to create a YouTube video?

Joe Penna is a great example of how someone can harness the power and reach of YouTube. His YouTube channel has over 2.5 million subscribers and his innovative videos are fast-propelling him up the list of the world’s top directors . People that have watched his videos will know what a talented and innovative individual he is.

We came across this ‘video puzzle’ last week and thought we’d share it. Enjoy.

 

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SEO: Content is key!

SE0-Content-Final3-1Over the past few years, there have been several changes to Google’s SEO algorithms. It feels as if as soon as companies start to master search engine optimisation, Google decides to move the goal posts. This can be frustrating for businesses; however, quite rightly in our opinion, each evolution of search is driven by improving the experience for the end-user, so it is important for companies to get their SEO strategy right, in order to make the most of their website.
With the SEO goal posts constantly moving, knowing how to improve the page rankings and performance of your website is often easier said than done. With this in mind, over the next few months, we will provide you with a series of blogs to help you demystify SEO and improve the visibility of your website.

 Creating content for your website isn’t about embedding as many key terms and phrases on your site as possible.  Google can distinguish between content that adds real value and content that has been posted solely for SEO purposes.

 

Use keywords, headers and page titles to support your text:

Quality content is the key! Most end-users aren’t looking to read long, academic papers; instead, they’re skimming the text, looking for what they need. Search engines do a similar job when indexing your site. Include keywords in the page title, headers and toward the top of the content. By doing this you are giving your website the best opportunity to be placed higher in search engines for those terms. Don’t be tempted to bombard your readers with links or bury the answers to their questions underneath vast swathes of ‘fluffy’ text that adds nothing to the reader’s experience or knowledge.

 

Write for your audience, not the search engines:

It is important to include good content that has been written for your end-user and not for a search engine. Before you can create great content for your website, you have to understand who your target audience is. Who are you talking to? Who is most likely to buy your product or service or religiously read your blog? If your target audience is a group of engineers, the content you create and the tone you use is going to be different than if you were targeting the over 50s looking for information on pensions and investments.

 

The frequency of your content matters:

Uploading one blog every few months isn’t going to generate the results you desire, but producing content with value on a regular basis is! Being a marketing company ourselves, it is extremely important for us to practice what we preach. During the busy Christmas period, we didn’t upload as many blogs and top tips on to our website as we would usually. This had a knock on effect on our search engine rankings. By increasing the frequency and quality of our content, we have experienced firsthand the positive impact on search engine rankings afforded by regular quality content updates.

 

Schedule and plan your content:

In order to help your online marketing stay on track and make the most of what good quality content can do for your website, we would recommend creating an editorial calendar to help support your marketing plan. Strategically plan out the order, topic and timing for each blog or news piece.  Don’t feel like you have to be the sole source of content for your website. Introduce different voices within the organisation and get employees involved in providing fresh content. You might be surprised by how much good quality content is available right at your fingertips.

 

Don’t forget to measure your website analytics:

Once you have started the process of making your content more search-engine friendly, it is important that you measure your results. Tools like Google Analytics will allow you to review traffic levels and identify any particular trends associated with the content on your site.

 

Stay tuned for more top tips to help you improve the visibility of your website.

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#MarketingTitbits – Top 100 Global Brands, Microsoft vs. Google and Mobile Payment Apps

1. The top 100 most valuable global brands of 2013
The annual BrandZ most valuable global brands list has been released and Apple keeps hold of the top spot for another year.

According to Millward Brown Optimor, the BrandZ list compilers, the Apple brand is worth an eye-watering $185bn.

Peter Walshe, Brandz global director explains the value of a ‘brand’:

“What we see with the most popular or powerful brands is that brand lasts a lot longer, is more robust and doesn’t tend to slip as much, whereas the finances go up and down,”

The Apple brand is ahead of its nearest competitor, Google, by $70bn dollars, demonstrating that despite its recent share price decline, Apple’s brand loyalty still stands it in good stead.

The top 10 looks like this:

Ranking Brand Brand value 2013 ($M)
1 Apple 185,071
2 Google 113,669
3 IBM 112,536
4 McDonald’s 90,256
5 Coca-Cola 78,415
6 AT&T 75,507
7 Microsoft 69,814
8 Marlboro 69,383
9 Visa 56,060
10 China Mobile 55,368

To see the full list click here.

 

2. Don’t get ‘Scroogled’!

When two corporate giants like Microsoft and Google decide to battle it out, the odds are it is going to get nasty. This time it is Microsoft’s turn, in the form of a cutting parody of Chrome’s ‘Now. Everywhere.’ Ad.

The video is the latest iteration of Microsoft’s ‘Scroogled’ campaign, designed to highlight the commercialisation of our data by Google, for its own profits.

It is speculated that the video was only ever designed to be seen internally at Microsoft. You can decide for yourself.

Microsoft’s Chrome Ad Video Parody

Whichever way you decide to view it, it all feels a little bit like sour grapes from Microsoft. For so long the industry bully, Microsoft has not been having it all its own way of late, whilst Google continues to go from strength to strength. Perhaps instead of spending time coming up with videos attacking other companies, Microsoft should focus its resources on creating an operating system people actually want to use!

 

3.  Mobile payments apps to improve customer service

If you are a small business and would like to take credit / debit card payments but don’t want the hassle of setting up card machines and dedicated lines etc. then these handy little apps are for you.

Not over from the US yet, Square is one of the market leaders. It is an app designed for iOS and Android mobile devices, which allows users with the simple addition of a free card reader, to take card payments via their phone or tablet.

Its rival, Intuit, has crossed the pond and offers a very similar experience, except provides a streamlined card reader, with a chip and pin keypad, for users to take card payments.

Whichever app you go for, adding the facility to take card payments to your organisation is a great way of improving your customer experience, making it easier for customers to pay for your services and products.

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#MarketingTitbits – McDonalds face a tricky PR situation, P Diddy does Downton Abbey and PicMonkey

1. McDonalds in PR conundrum
McDonalds have got themselves into an interesting conundrum by promising publicly, by the way of a press release, that they will ‘be reaching out’ to Charles Ramsey, the man credited with saving the three kidnapped girls in Cleveland USA. Ramsay famously announced shortly after the event, in front of the worlds press, “I did it just after eating a Big Mac”.

What form of reward the corporate giant have in mind is currently unknown, but it has raised an interesting debate about how big brands and organisations should respond when they are inadvertently thrust into significant news stories.

In McDonalds’ case, the story is particularly disturbing and shocking. Knowing how best to respond so as not to appear callous, mercenary and opportunistic is not straight forward. Their position is further complicated by Charles Ramsay’s colourful past, consisting of 3 convictions of domestic violence and a period in jail, just over a decade ago.

What is clear, is that having made a promise so publicly, McDonalds will have to follow through and devise a ‘reward’ for Ramsay that shows it to be true to its word, whilst not damaging its brand reputation by being seen to try and profit from a truly awful and horrific experience for 3 women.

For more on the story and some examples of other brands caught up in news stories click here.

 

2. P Diddy does Downton Abbey

The power of social media has been highlighted once again this week, with the release of rapper P Diddy’s spoof Downton Abbey trailer.

Mid-week, the US hip-hop star announced via Twitter, that he was to star in the hit UK TV Show, as the first black cast member.

This was followed shortly after with the release of a spoof video clip, with P Diddy taking advantage of so fancy editing skills, to introduce his own character, Lord Wolcott, into the show.

The show’s producers were bemused but played along, no doubt conscious of the huge amount of coverage P Diddy’s endorsement and fresh take on the show would generate.

There is no doubt in our mind that P Diddy’s actions will help the already hugely successful show, gather yet more fans.

Time will tell if ‘Lord Wolcott’ is ever to make an appearance on the show. Our money would be on a debut on next year’s Comic Relief show!

You can watch the video here.

 

3. Image-editing site PicMonkey

We’ve featured this before in a newsletter as one of our top tips, but it is so good we wanted to draw people’s attention to this great picture editing site once again.

If you find Photoshop frustrating but other picture editors too basic, PicMonkey could be for you. It is a free, cloud picture-editing website that allows users to simply and easily edit their images, without the need to purchase expensive software or get to grips with the unintuitive interface of Photoshop.

It has some really cool features that enable a novice to appear a Photoshop pro and it can be accessed on any computer where there is an internet connection.

To find out more and to give it a try visit PicMonkey.

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#MarketingTitbits – Tagging On Instagram, Tips From Obama’s Marketing Team & YouTube 8 Years On

Instagram introduces taggingIf you are a Facebook user, you’ll be familiar with tagging. Social media picture sharing app Instagram has now introduced the feature to its platform, which enables users to tag anything or anyone that has an Instagram username, in an image.

This includes people, places, companies and brands.

The new feature potentially opens up the opportunity of free advertising for companies and brands; who will no doubt be keen to tap into this new tool to build awareness and loyalty.

For those of you unfamiliar with Instagram, find out more here. The social media app’s engagement statistic make a compelling argument for taking it seriously – every second over 8,500 photos are liked and over 1,000 comments are posted on Instagram.

 

10 marketing lessons from Barak Obama’s CTO

When Barack Obama secured his 2nd term as US President, many commentators pointed to his team’s mastery of the digital marketing arena, as a key foundation for his success.

At the recent DMA Technology Summit in London, Harper Reed, Chief Technology Officer for Obama’s 2012 campaign, outlined the winning strategy and techniques that helped Obama to extend his presidency into a 2nd term. These have been distilled into 10 key points byMarketing magazine’s Nicola Kemp, including:

1. Building a great team

2. Embracing diversity

3. Focusing on user experience

4. Facilitating community

To find out more about each point and see the full list, click here.

 

YouTube 8 Years on

On April 23rd this year, YouTube turned 8 years old. It is hard to believe even its founders foresaw its impact on society across the globe. The statistics are mind blowing:

  • In excess of  1 billion unique users each month
  • Over 4 billion hours of video viewed every month
  • 72 hours of video uploaded every minute
  • YouTube is localized in 53 countries and across 61 languages

The first, somewhat uninspiring, video uploaded to YouTube was entitled ‘Me at the zoo’ and was posted by YouTube founder Jawed Karim.

The current most viewed video in YouTube history, with an incredible 1.5 billion + views, is South Korean pop sensation Psy’s Gangnam Style video. Who knows how long it will be before Psy is knocked off top spot, what is certain is that it will happen and the video in question will make its owner a very wealthy individual!

 

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Marketing Titbits – 5 Free Image Websites, Most Complained-About-Ads of 2012 and Card Munch

1. Free Images:
They say ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’, but these days, it can also cost a £1000. We remember the days, only 7 or 8 years ago, when you could purchase high-res, quality images from stock image sites for a £1 or so. Since then, the market has got wise to its potential and prices have soared.

If you are finding yourself paying increasingly large amounts for images to use across your marketing, you will be pleased to hear there are a growing number of free stock image websites popping up out there. They might not all look as slick as iStockphoto or Dreamstime, or contain as large databases. However, if you have a Google- around you’ll be surprised at just what you can get for free and without the ongoing concern of receiving a letter from a disgruntled picture archive demanding £1000s for illegal use of their image.

Here are 5 to get you started:

Stock.xchng

Freeimages.co.uk

Freedigitalphotos.net

Freepixels

Turbo Photo

 

Most complained-about adverts of 2012:

I’m sure we all have our pet hate adverts but every so often there comes along an advert that unites viewers in mutual dislike. Marketing & PR publication ‘Marketing’ have put together the top most complained about adverts of 2012.

There are some predictable names in there. The Advertising Standards Authority received over 2000 complaints over the Gocompare.com adverts. However, there are a few unexpected ones in the list.

To get the full list and watch the offending adverts in question, click here.

 

Card Munch:

We believe networking is an important component in your marketing arsenal. Despite the rise of online & social networking, one must not forget the influence and potential of face-to-face.

A bi-product of networking is the rapid accumulation of business cards.

Card munch is a clever little app, currently only available for iPhone users, which turns business cards into contacts. The app lets you take a picture of a business card, which then captures the information leaving you free to recycle the card. The app has the added bonus of LinkedIn integration, using data from the individual’s business card to pull through additional information located on their LinkedIn profile. Particularly handy for exhibitions and conferences!

To find out more about Card Munch and to download the app, click here.

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Making your marketing work

Spring has sprung…finally.  This is a good time of year to reflect back on the last few months and decide what worked and what didn’t for your business. All too often, companies at the start of the year create and launch marketing campaigns without ever reviewing the end results.  In order to ensure your marketing is performing as it needs to, to enable you to meet your business goals, it is vital that you take the time to look back at the last few months and review the impact of your marketing activity.
To help you get started, we have highlighted below some key areas your business should be reviewing and some simple steps to help get your social media, website and email campaigns running smoothly this Spring.

 

Website:

We cannot stress enough the importance of reviewing your website’s performance through Google Analytics. Yes, the amount of data can be overwhelming and sometimes it’s difficult knowing where to start and how to use the data available. Reviewing the basics first, for example number of visitors, referral, search and direct traffic and the bounce rate, will help provide you with a good idea of how successful your website is performing. However, there are a few additional metrics we’d recommend including in your review:

  • Page load speed

There has been an increasing importance placed on page load speeds when it comes to user experience and its impact on a site’s search engine ranking. Internet users have a notoriously short attention span and if a site takes more than a few seconds to load a page, users will quickly loose interest. To find out how you can improve the page load speeds on your website, the nice people at Google have provided a free tool, PageSpeed Insights

  • Devices

The way we engage online is changing. More and more people are using mobile devices to access information quickly. You might find that the majority of your visitors access your site through mobile, if so, you would need to present you site in a way that bests fits with this form of device.

 

Social media:

Vowed to make the most of what social media has to offer your business? It is common for businesses to dive into social media, joining all the relevant platforms and making a promise to move the company’s marketing online. However, many companies are often disappointed with the results social media generates.

Has your social media activity been disappointing? Have you struggled to write interesting content and find interesting updates to share with your followers? Like any marketing activity, you will need to put in place a social media strategy that aligns with your overall marketing objectives. The strategy doesn’t have to be complicated, but it will help your team understand what it is you want to achieve from your social media activity and how you plan to achieve it. Consider what content they should be sharing, what links they should be including and who they should be targeting.

Social media doesn’t have to be time consuming. If you’re struggling to update your accounts consistently, there are tools like Hootsuite that will let you schedule tweets and Facebook updates. You could schedule a whole week’s worth of posts in 15 minutes.

 

Email marketing:

Have you recently launched an email campaign? Did you review the results? Was it successful?

We have previously discussed the importance of fine-tuning your email marketing and making the most of what email software has to offer. If you are struggling to get good results from your campaigns, it is important that you review where you might be going wrong. Several factors can influence the success rate of your marketing emails, including:

  • Time of day your emails were sent
  • The subject line
  • Email content and links
  • Plain text or HTML?
  • Your data

A/B split testing campaigns can help you decide what time of day, content and subject line work best for your database.

Segmenting your database down into sensible groups, rather than sending one email to everyone on the list, will improve open and engagement rates. In addition, it will also help you identify if certain segments of your list are poor quality or not receptive to email marketing as a marketing medium.

A poor campaign could actually be the best thing that happens to your marketing, if it provides you with an insight which can inform and improve your future marketing programmes. If you cannot pinpoint what went wrong, it then just becomes a waste of money.

To aid this process, make sure you make changes to campaigns iteratively, so you can attribute any changes in results to a particular amendment.

Good luck and make sure your marketing is working for your business!

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Marketing Titbits – MarketingWeekLive, When Advertising Goes Wrong and PageSpeed Insights

1. MarketingWeekLive – get your ticketsThe UK’s largest marketing event takes place between the 26 – 27th June 2013 at London conference venue, Olympia.

With over 450 exhibitors addressing all things marketing, a plethora of free ‘conference’ sessions from some of the world’s largest brands, networking opportunities and learning seminars, MarketingWeekLive is a great event to attend if you have an interest in marketing.

To find out more information about the exhibitors, insight seminars, speakers and to book your tickets, click here.

2. When Advertising Goes Wrong

We found this great blog last week showing 23 unfortunate advert placements. If you fancy a laugh take a look. It just goes to show that you can design and proof adverts all you like but there are some things outside your control, like where and how the adverts are placed. Our particular favourite is the billboard promoting heart disease awareness, placed alongside a Burger King ad promoting 2 ‘Croissanwiches’ for $3!

To see all the images, click here. Let us know which is your favourite.

3. Page Load Speed Insights – Improve your Website’s SEO

When attempting to improve your website’s SEO credentials it is easy to overlook an increasingly important factor – PageLoad speed.

A webpage that loads quickly offers an improved user experience. Faster page loads are shown to decrease bounce rates and improve conversion rates. As such, they are also thought to be a factor the search engines use when assessing your website and then positioning it in search results.

To find out how you can improve the page load speeds on your website, the nice people at Google have provided a free tool, PageSpeed Insights, to assess the pages on your site and suggest ways of improving the page speed.

Take a look to see how your site performs and how you can improve it.

 

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Marketing Titbits – Crowd Funding, Marketing Grader & Delivering Happiness

1. Crowd funding:
By now, you must have heard about Crowd Funding. It is a relatively new and innovative way of raising funds for a project or business, without the need to go to the bank and ask for a loan.

You might ask why are we referencing it in a marketing blog and the answer is simple. If you are developing a new product or service and you look to crowd funding as a means of funding it, at the end of the project you potentially have a preformed client base. This is particularly well exemplified across the gaming industry, where new games are crowded funded by enthusiastic individuals, passionate about the game and keen to help fund its development. These investors are frequently the game’s target audience and are emotionally, as well as financially, invested in the final product. Crowd funding can be a shrewd way of building a product / service’s client base, as well as funding its development.

If this has got you intrigued, here are a few sites to take a look at:

2. Marketing Grader from Hubspot:

Interested in finding out how your website scores across the following categories against competitors and industry best practice?

Blogging
Social
Lead generation
Mobile
SEO

Visit Marketing Grader for a quick and insightful report outlining where you site is performing well and where there are areas for improvement. It is free and they will even keep you updated on the impact of your future website changes on your site’s benchmarked performance on an on-going basis.

3. Delivering Happiness – A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose

This book comes very highly recommended and is a must add to the libraries of all those interested in learning how CEO Tony Hsieh took online retailer Zappos (now part of Amazon) to annual sales of $1 billion by employing some rather unconventional and innovative methods. SMEs can take inspiration and ideas from Hsieh’s techniques.

You can find out more about the book here – Delivering Happiness.

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