#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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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 – 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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#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 – Choose the Perfect LinkedIn Photo, Tips for Company Colour Schemes and Tennis: a history in ads

How to choose your LinkedIn profile photoAs you know, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking site, with over 200million members in over 200 countries. Now the odds are, you probably have a profile on it (if you don’t, it would be a good idea to get on it today) but it constantly amazes us how frequently we find profiles without a profile picture associated with them. It’s a bit like turning up to a networking event with a balaclava on. Studies bear out the importance of having one, finding that profiles with a photo received about 50%-70% more enquiries than profiles that don’t have one. So having a photo is better than not having one; however, it is equally important to choose a photo for your profile that conveys the right message and not the wrong one! A photo of you at the local pub with a pint in your hand may be a true representation of how you spend your time but it’s not exactly appropriate for LinkedIn. After all, they do say “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

We’ve found a great article with 11 top tips on choosing your LinkedIn profile photo, and another showcasing 10 examples of terrible LinkedIn profile photos.

http://www.careerealism.com/linkedin-photo-tips/

http://andrewmacarthy.com/andrew-macarthy-social-media/10-terrible-examples-of-linkedin-profile-photos-bad-linkedin-profile-pics

 

Tips for Company Colour Schemes

Different colours have different meanings, for example, white connotes innocence and purity, whereas red connotes love and passion. We all know that colours and the connotations associated with them are very important to consider when choosing a colour scheme for your brand; however, there are many other things to consider.

Designers frequently use the 60-30-10 rule, which suggests that you choose three different colours and use them in the ratio of 60%, 30% and 10%. The rule provides a simple way to develop an appropriate colour scheme for your brand.

This week, we came across a great article with top tips for company colour schemes. So whether you’re starting up a business from scratch or redesigning your current brand, we think this article is definitely worth a read.

http://mashable.com/2013/06/09/color-schemes-business/

 

Tennis: a history in ads

Britain is the home to the world’s oldest and most prestigious tennis tournament, Wimbledon. Each year, nearly 500,000 people attend the two week event and its impact is felt right across our day-to-day life, as prominent brands jump on board the tennis bandwagon for the period. With Wimbledon into it’s second week and with two Brits into the 4th round, there is no better time to celebrate the history of tennis-related television adverts:

 

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#MarketingTitbits – Looking to brush up on your technical skills? Great apps everyone is talking about right now and books on marketing!

Looking to brush up on your Photoshop skills?
If you’d like to develop your creative and technical skills in a cost-effective way, then take a look at this great website with over 1,900 video courses in a range of topics from design and photography to Adobe and Microsoft. They even let you trial it for free for 7 days to see how you get on.

It has some nice features, like unlimited access to all the courses available and the list keeps growing. It accommodates all levels of expertise, from beginner to expert. You can share courses with your friends or colleagues and perhaps most useful of all, you can access the videos on a computer, tablet or mobile device and switch between them for your convenience.

Good luck!

http://www.lynda.com/

 

Apps everyone is talking about right now

It seems there is an app for everything right now and with the app market valued earlier this year by the Wall Street Journal at $25 billion, the rate at which they come into the marketplace is only going to increase.

To help point you in the right direction of the ones worth knowing about, we found this interesting article about 15 apps that everyone is talking about right now. From Park Me, an app that helps users find places to park nearby, to Tempo, a ‘smart calendar’ app that helps you organise your day better and the likes of Candy Crush and Vine in-between.

http://www.businessinsider.com/apps-everyone-is-talking-about-right-now-2013-7

 

Top 10 marketing books of all time

Like the app market, the sales, marketing and business book market is saturated with publications of varying degrees of usefulness. Life is too short to waste it reading poor books, so we always try to pass on recommendations of books worth spending your precious time on.

With this in mind, if you’re looking to read up on your marketing this summer and want some books for light reading on the beach, we’ve found this useful article on the top 10 marketing books of all time. Have a read and let us know what you think!

http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/top-10-marketing-books-of-all-time_1.html

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Who Will Village – Biannual Update

Biannual Update July 2013This month we received the biannual report from the Who Will Village in Cambodia. Here we sponsor a little girl called Sreylim through ‘CamKids’, The Cambodian Children’s Charity. The Who Will Village work very hard all year round to improve the education, medical conditions and life in general for the children that live there.
The newsletter highlights all the changes that have been made at the village over the last 6 months, including de-worming and de-headlicing programmes, the appointment of a new village manager and the building of a brand new school computer room. It is clear to see that the village is moving forward day-by-day.

As well as developing the children’s school, they celebrated International Children’s Day with games, face painting, t-shirt painting, balloon sculpture, manicures, pedicures and football.

To read more about life in the Who Will village, please click here.

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#MarketingTitbits – Top apps for the 1%, will Google Glass be good for ecommerce and Rory McIlroy vs. a robot golf match!

Top apps for the 1%
As an app designer, competing with the likes of Google and Facebook is a hard job, unless you are very smart about it. There is a lot of pre-existing competition for mainstream apps that target mass audiences.

Because of this, app designers have started coming up with apps for niche audiences, for example Wattpad, an app designed for aspiring novelists to share their work in a tailored way that is better than an everyday blog.

Along with this, there has been a rise in the apps for the 1%, which the majority of us can admire but unfortunately cannot afford either to buy, or to use. The “I Am Rich” app which cost $999.99 was merely an icon that reminds you that you were able to afford it, a work of art with no hidden purpose. Make of it what you will, but it was taken down from the App Store by Apple a few days later, with ‘only’ 8 copies ever being sold.

Despite this, there are many apps that target the 1%, which are fully functional and do serve a purpose. If you fancy a spot of window shopping then check out the apps below!

BlackJet
The on-demand private jet service.

Inspirato
The luxury destination travel app.

Onefinestay
An app for rich people who are bored of going on holiday and want to swap mansions instead.

Boatbound
A boat borrowing program for the elite.

Tiffany & Co. Engagement Ring Finder
This one is fairly self-explanatory.

VIP Black
Kind of like Groupon, except it costs you $1,000 a month

 

Will Google glass be good for ecommerce?

If you haven’t yet heard about Google Glass yet, then now is about time. It is basically a computer that is worn like a pair of glasses. It can be used to check directions, to capture photos and videos, send messages and answer questions that you would usually type into Google.

From a commercial perspective, people have pondered whether Google Glass will be good for e-commerce? We found a great article which evaluates this. To have a look click here.

 

The best robot vs. Rory McIlroy golf contest you will ever see

This week, we found a great viral-friendly video created to promote the PGA tour. In it, Rory McIlroy embarks on a golf contest against a robot. As well as being very good at golf, Jeff the robot is also a trash-talking, joyously mean-spirited robot.

Watch the video below

click here

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CamKids Newsletter Summer 2013

cam-kidsThis week, we received the summer 2013 newsletter from the charity that we support, CamKids. CamKids main aim is to support children in Cambodia whose parents are either too poor or for another reason, unable to support them.
CamKids have had a busy start to the year with lots going on. They have two new teachers at the school and a new vegetable patch has been built. Additionally, two wells have been drilled and two septic tanks installed. Toys, library books, school uniform and footwear have been given to the children, all the things that we take for granted.

To find out about everything that has been going on with CamKids over the last few months and to see the newsletter in full, please click here.

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SEO: Video makes a difference

seo-image-final!Last month, we provided you with a series of top tips to help you improve the visibility of your website, by uploading regular, quality content.  To help you make the most of your website, the second part of our ‘demystifying SEO’ blog delves into the world of video and viral marketing.
If executed correctly, video content can be extremely beneficial when trying to improve your organisation’s position online.  The average internet user views 32.2 videos a month and it’s been shown that videos can increase the number of website visits by 55%. It has also been predicted that by 2014, 90% of website traffic will be video. With numbers that significant, what business would argue against the incredible opportunity video can offer your organisation?

In order to use video to boost your online presence, it is important to consider the following points.

1.  Outline your SEO goals, strategy and content:

With SEO and video, it’s important to first establish what you want to achieve. Do you want to increase your social presence? Generate lots of views on YouTube, or perhaps create more tailored traffic to your website? Designing and making the video is the simple part, but companies often fail when it comes to defining goals and putting an online strategy in place. Goals can include:

  • Improving website traffic as a whole or for specific pages
  • Generating social shares and creating a viral campaign
  • Increase sales from your website
  • Building your brand awareness online

In addition to this, you will need to decide what type of video you want to produce. Over 80% of the videos that list in Google’s search results are informational. Pushy sales videos do not tend to rank as well within Google, so it is important that you produce content that appeals to your target market and adds value.  Video content can include.

  • Client testimonials
  • Introducing your organisation and team
  • Product demonstrations
  • Top industry tips
  • Fun viral video about your organisation

2.  Include a title and description within your videos:

Search engines look at the information you have provided about the video and compare it with the context of the page that the video is on. If the page title and the video title match up, there is more of a chance that you will get a higher ranking on Google.  It is also very important to make your video’s title specific; you are much more likely to rank higher when the keyword is not too general.

3.  Take into account the length of your video – less is more

Most people would rather spend two minutes watching an interesting video than spend ten minutes reading an article. Statistics show that people tend to engage with online videos for 2.5 minutes on average, so when making your video, try not to make it too long in order to keep you audience interested.

4.  Duplicate your video across several platforms.

To reap the SEO benefits associated with video, you will need to include your content on several different platforms. There are numerous outlets for you to take advantage of, the most important being YouTube.  Having recently celebrated their 8th birthday, YouTube is now one of the most viewed websites in the world, generating billions of hits. Once you have created a YouTube channel, you can then embed the video on to your website and include it on social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to increase the exposure and linking potential.

5.  Create a Video Sitemap

Once you have included the video on your website, you will need to create a Video Sitemap. Currently search engines can’t look at what is in the video, so the Video Sitemap tells the search engine everything it needs to know about the content, for example, the title, description and duration.

6.  Measure the success of your video with Google Analytics:

Like any other marketing activity, you will need to measure your results.  Free tools such as Google Analytics will help you establish if your video content has increased the level of traffic to your website.  You could produce a couple of different videos and compare the results, this will determine the type of content that your audience responds the best to.

Even though video isn’t new to the web, many businesses fail to make the best use of tools that will take their video and SEO results to the next level. If you are going to invest time and money in boosting your SEO, start considering video in your marketing mix.

Not only is video a great way to share your story, it’s also  an effective way to build links back to your site and if you target your audience in an exciting, unique way, maybe your video will even go viral. This is where the major search engine optimisation benefit comes into play.

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