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What SMEs need to know for effective marketing in 2016 – seminar summary

Last week, TLC Business held our annual marketing seminar at The Mayflower Theatre in Southampton, but with a slight twist. We teamed up with Simon Harmer and his company Blown Away to deliver an inspirational session for businesses looking to get their marketing up and running.

This year, the focus was to ‘Get Your Marketing in Order for 2016’, and this blog will outline the main themes explored on the day, just in case you missed it!

Social media

With social media now firmly embedded into all our lives, it is clearly of big importance to us marketers. To help you succeed in your social media exploits, here are some top tips:

  1. Make sure your timing’s are on point. Many businesses fail to engage with their social media audience because they are posting at the wrong times. There are now a variety of scheduling platforms such as Buffer that suggests the best times to post updates for your business – so take advantage!
  2. Get your business on the right platforms. If you’re looking to build meaningful B2B connections and the ability to forge lasting business relationships, then LinkedIn consistently comes out on top as your best bet. In contrast, if you’re a B2C organisation and are looking to drive audience engagement and ultimately sales, then Facebook tops the list.
  3. Ensure that your posts have that ‘visual’ appeal. Posts that contain an image are 94% more likely to be shared than ones that don’t. Many marketers miss out on this simple trick that can increase social media engagement and reach dramatically!
  4. Posting the same content to all channels can become a bit tedious for your audience if they are present on each platform. Take advantage of the respective strengths of each social media platform and post content accordingly.

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is still perceived by many as a bit of a dark art. Despite constant algorithm updates, there are still opportunities to play the SEO game effectively and win.

Google is increasingly positioning itself as an ‘answers engine’. The advent of mobile has also put the cats amongst the pigeons (excuse the pun for those SEO geeks out there!) meaning there are even more opportunities to make your local business standout from the crowd.

Tips:

  1. Ensure that Google Analytics and Webmaster tools are installed and active on your website. Combined they will give you all the information you need (and more!) to get your website to be the best it can be. Google Webmaster tools will tell you what terms your site is being found for in Google, as well as identify any aspects of your site that are holding it back.
  2. Take full advantage of Google’s Keyword Planner to help inform the decision making process behind the keywords you choose to optimise your website pages for. And remember, keywords don’t have to be one word; they can effectively be phrases too.
  3. If you only do a few things SEO related on your website, make sure two of them are creating unique meta titles and descriptions optimised for the keyword-focus for each particular page.
  4. Get involved with Google Developer for page speed insights and how accessible on desktop or mobile your website is. Google gives marketers an insight into the loading speeds of their website, and will also give tips on how to increase load speed times. Alongside this, Google Developer provides a mobile-friendly test that will give marketers the tips and improvement suggestions they need to make their site better for mobile users.

PPC

96% of Google’s revenue comes from PPC ads, so clearly PPC is an important tool for them. We are sure you must be aware of the ads that populate Google’s search results pages! Statistics show that the top 3 ads on each search page receive 46% of traffic. PPC click-through rates are also shown to be 10 times higher than organic search clicks.

So what influences a good PPC ad? Each ad on every search page is ranked by Google. One’s ad rank is based on their cost-per-click and quality score. Your ads quality score has the ability to make or break your campaigns success. The quality score is made up of your ads click through rate, alongside your ads relevance to the keyword and your landing page’s relevance to the targeted keyword. The more relevant the better!

Tips:

  1. Make your ad text as relevant as possible to the keyword and ensure your landing page is targeted at that keyword too! Try getting your landing page’s URL to include the keyword in too.
  2. Get retargeting. Retargeting has given us marketers another tool to boost our marketing with. With retargeted visitors 70% more likely to convert, it doesn’t come as a surprise that retargeting is another highly effective marketing technique. To put it in its most simple form, retargeting is the practice of serving display ads to people who have previously engaged with your brand. It is vital for marketers looking to increase marketing results in 2016, helping to drive sales and increase brand awareness.  The numbers are compelling. Statistics have shown that retargeted ads receive a 0.70% click-through rate, compared to just 0.07% for regular display ads. Following this, brand search exposure can increase by over 1000%, just from retargeting. With this in mind, retargeting is a must for 2016!

E-marketing

With 2.6 billion email users worldwide, it doesn’t come as a surprise that e-marketing is still a massive hit with marketers. It is reported that for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return is $44.25, providing yet more reason for you to start thinking about promotion through email if you haven’t done so already.

The popularity of email marketing is continuing to grow, and more email scheduling platforms are being introduced. Platforms such as Campaign Monitor, ReplyApp and MailChimp are great tools for creating, scheduling and managing marketing email campaigns.

Tips:

  1. Use email marketing platforms such as Campaign Monitor to split test each email campaign. This will allow you to identify what content and approach is most effective at meeting your objectives and enables you to continually refine and improve on what works best.
  2. Personalisation is key! Send emails that are personalised to the recipient. Include their name in the subject line, reference topics and include content that they have expressed in interest in. This will not only help build better relationships between your business and consumer, but it will be demonstrable through better engagement and open rates.
  3. Make the email content mobile-friendly, that way the emails can be accessed by a wider audience.

Content Marketing

Creating and sharing content that engages your audience (Content Marketing in a nutshell!) is now a vital component of the marketing mix for marketers. New and fresh content should be published regularly. What regularly looks like depends on your audience. For B2B marketers, 26% post news and updates multiple times a week.

92% of businesses that use social media, use it as a tool to present content. Email is another vital content distribution tool.  LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube make up the top 3 for effectiveness when sharing content, but all have different advantages and disadvantages; therefore it’s important to make sure your content is tailored to your different channels.

Top Tools

With 2016 approaching, what are the top tools for more effective marketing? We have identified Datananas as a potentially effective tool for those looking to build their professional database, with its ability to export LinkedIn users and their contact information from LinkedIn without the need to be connected to them.

Other platforms like Buffer have also popped up on the radar, with its unique imaging software – Pablo! Brands are now able to upload an image of their choice and add text to it, making each social media post unique and eye-catching for their audience.

SumoMe is another top marketing tool for 2016, incorporating a series of apps all designed to get your website and content working. The toolbox includes on page analytics, free traffic for your site, image sharer and a smart bar that will increase your number of email subscribers – amazing!

What else is there to add to the marketing tool list? Google’s Webmaster Tools crops up again! As mentioned before, Google’s Webmaster Tools is a vitally important tool for anyone with a website. With the ability to understand your site’s organic search performance, as well as providing tips and tricks on how to get more traffic, the tool is a must.

One New Year’s resolution for you – download these marketing tools!

So, what matters for SMEs?

We think the top 5 themes that SMEs should consider in 2016 are:

  1. Content is king – still!
  2. Analytics
  3. Personalisation
  4. Online ads
  5. Video

We hope you find this useful and would like to thank everyone who attended. We look forward to seeing you again soon!

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#MarketingTitbits – The Economist, Social Media Hacks, Brands For Millennials

digital-hacks-brands1. How The Economist injected digital into a 172-year-old magazine
The 172-year-old publication, The Economist, has recently embraced digital technology, with help from Iain Noakes, The Economist’s Global Digital Acquisition Journey and Performance Director. With this new revolution, Noakes was keen to stress that despite its recent efforts, The Economist is not a digital brand.

The Economist team researched their potential market and found that their circulation could grow from 1.6m to 73m, just by making their magazine accessible online. According to Noakes, a large proportion of people subscribe once they’ve browsed the content, and those who unsubscribe are retargeted through further content.

For more information, click here.

2. 30 days’ worth of social media hacks and experiments

Marketers like us are always keen to find new ways to improve our social media numbers, and the best way to grow in the social media world is to try new things. To inspire change, entrepreneur Kevan Lee has drummed up 30 new, small and simple experiments.

One of the favourite recommendations for getting more followers and engagement on social media is to embed a tweet at the bottom of a blog post, making it easy for readers to engage with the blog. Not only this, but posting during non-peak hours can also boost recognition, as well as pinning a tweet at the top of a Twitter profile.

To read Kevan’s top 30 social media hacks, click here.

3. The top 100 brands for millennials

Millennials make up a large consumer group, and 3,500 people aged between 20 and 35 have been asked by Moosylvania for their favourite brands over the past three years. Some of the brands that came out on top were surprising – others, not so much.

With 91% of Millennials owning a smartphone, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the top brand was Apple. However, you might be surprised to see Nintendo, reaching #11, elevated by the nostalgia Millennials feel when playing the games they enjoyed when they were kids. Some brands didn’t fare so well though, Subway being a prime example, given that Millennials make up a key target audience, occupying a lowly #92.

Click here to view the top 100 brands for Millennials.

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#MarketingTitbits – Innovative Entrepreneurs, British Brands, Facebook Emojis

innovation-british-emojis1. 10 traits of the most innovative entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship fits perfectly with innovation – producing new ideas, providing better solutions and pioneering new products. The most successful entrepreneurs aren’t just the hardest working, but the most innovative too.

If entrepreneurs aren’t flexing their innovative muscles, then success and breakthroughs are difficult to achieve. Innovation is becoming more and more important to brands as markets are becoming more demanding. To this end, Entrepreneur have put together 10 ways to be more innovative, to help get you innovating.

If you want to learn how to be more innovative, click here.

2. 32 classically ‘British’ brands that aren’t actually British

British brands are recognised all over the world for their authenticity and quality; however, these days many are now not owned by British firms or individuals. Many think that Harrods is a quintessentially British brand, but previous owner, the enigmatic Egyptian Mohamed Al Fayed sold it to Qatar Holdings, who currently own it.

HP is the most British brand around, and has been for quite some time. It has been the most popular sauce in the Houses of Parliament; nevertheless it is now owned by Americans – purchased by Heinz in 2005.

To see the 32 iconic ‘British’ brands – no longer british-owned, click here.

3. What Facebook’s new emojis mean for marketers

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last through years, the chances are you will have used an Emoji or two to compliment a post or message. Finally bowing to pressure to introduce a ‘dislike’ function, Facebook have turned to the Emoji to satisfy a demand amongst Facebook users to convey more than a ‘thumbs up’ in response to a Facebook post. The new feature on the platform will enable users to reply to a post with one of 5 emojis: Love, Yay, Wow, Sad and Angry.

The new emoticons provide brands with a real opportunity to encourage their users to reply with a feeling or emotion, rather than just a like, comment or share. Facebook are always looking for ways to improve their user’s experience, and this new feature will be ranked as a major update to the platform.

Click here for more information.

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#MarketingTitbits – Volkswagen Crisis, Must-Read Books, Mission Statements

volkswagen-books-statement1. Social media and crisis management: a Volkswagen case study
The Volkswagen emissions scandal has raised many questions – but what has happened to their social media activity? On Friday 18th September, Volkswagen sensibly stopped posting to Facebook and Twitter after the emissions scandal broke out in the US, but they can’t hide forever!

The accounts were dark and gloomy for a whole week until a statement was posted from Michael Horn, the US CEO. The silence from Volkswagen, as you would expect, didn’t stop consumers having their say on the scandel.

To see more on how Volkswagen handled the crisis, click here.

2. The entrepreneur’s ultimate list of 8 must-read books

Business owners, entrepreneurs and business leaders know there are no shortage of business, entrepreneurial and leadership-related books out there on the market, but with time so precious, what should we be reading?  To help direct our attention on the best books out there at the moment, the good people at Amazon have compiled ‘The Entrepreneur’s Ultimate List of 8 Must-Read Books’.

There are some old favourites on there like The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. As well as others we haven’t read yet.

To view the list, click here.

3. Infographic: the 24 most inspirational company mission statements

There is much debate about the importance of a mission statement. Done well they are a very clear and succinct way of communicating the purpose of a business and a means of keeping in focus why it exists. Done badly and they represent just a series of nice sounding statements that bear no relation to the actual day to day running of a business or organisation.

The insurance company Unum have collected 24 ‘inspirational’ mission statements from some of the world’s biggest brands, including Nike, Google and Ikea.

To find out what they are, along with the full list, click here.

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#MarketingTitbits – Favourite TV Ads, Flash Ads, Visual Evolution

tvads-google-social media1. #60YearsTVAds: vote for your favourite TV ad of all time
The 60th anniversary of the first TV ad shown in the UK is approaching us, and over the past few weeks Marketing Magazine has asked for nominations for the best TV ads of all time. Their social media followers have been suggesting a long list of their favourite ads for weeks, and now it’s been whittled down to just 25.

Iconic adverts from Cadburys, John Lewis and Compare the Market have all been nominated by the public, but what are your thoughts?

To vote for your favourite TV ad of all time, click here.

2. Brands ‘caught by surprise’ as Google turns off Flash ads

Google surprised many brands last week as they decided to turn off Flash ads. This change means interactive digital ads that use Adobe’s Flash technology will no longer play automatically. Google’s alternative to this now features an empty grey box with a “play” button that has to be clicked for the advert to start.

It’s believed that this decision had been made to help speed up web browsing and save battery life. But could the move be linked to security problems? It’s well known that hackers have previously used Flash to create malicious ads to steal data and harm devices, and also follows on from Firefox’s decision to block Flash earlier in the year.

Click here for more information.

3. How the visual evolution of social media has affected brands

With images and videos being posted more and more on social media, brands are trying to find ways to keep up with their visual media. Social media involves a lot of time and money, but with visual content on the rise, brands simply can’t stand out without being creative.

The visual nature of social media has affected brands in many ways. Econsultancy has put together 5 ways brands can improve their awareness through photography, digital technology and creativity, but will this stay the same for the new generation of social media savvy youth?

Click here to see how social media has affected brands.

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#MarketingTitbits – Rugby World Cup, Snapchat Campaigns, Logo Colour Swap

rugby-snapchat-colour 21. A marketer’s essential guide to the Rugby World Cup
The Rugby World Cup, taking place in England and Wales this year, is regarded as one of the biggest sporting spectacles on the planet. This year, the tournament is predicted to have 20,000 hours of broadcast coverage, making it potentially the most commercially lucrative to date.

So what does this mean for marketers? Newspaper group Trinity Mirror believes the Rugby World Cup presents vast opportunities for advertisers to reach the UK population. Research shows that 66% of us plan to follow the tournament this year, providing a massive opportunity for marketers to showcase their brand!

The tournament is fast approaching, so click here to find out more about making the most of the marketing opportunities it will generate.

2. Five seriously creative Snapchat campaigns and their results

Social media has proven to be an effective marketing platform; however many marketers still aren’t using it to its full potential. Snapchat may not seem like an obvious choice for some marketers, but some of the most successful brands are using the platform to run intriguing and effective campaigns.

Brands such as McDonald’s and Calvin Klein have excelled with their targeted campaigns, all with the help of Snapchat. Calvin Klein developed a campaign whereby celebrities were asked to produce selfies and share on Snapchat. The impact was considerable, with Calvin Klein experiencing 140,000 content views and a 15% increase in Snapchat engagement.

Click here to find out more about 5 effective Snapchat campaigns.

3. Here’s what 22 famous logos would look like if they swapped colours

We already know that simplicity is often key to a successful logo. Likewise, if you’ve spent hours agonising over colour combinations, you’ll appreciate the importance of getting the balance right? A Brazilian graphic designer, Paúla Rupolo, recently experimented with swapping brand logo colours with one of their competitors, and the results have been brought to us by AdWeek.

Click here to see what the impact is of switching the brand colours of Sprite and 7UP, Real Madrid and Barcelona, UPS and Fedex, Amazon and Ebay and more.

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#MarketingTitbits – Masters of Marketing, Instagram, Google Analytics

award-photo1. Get your nominations in for brand of the year at the Masters of Marketing Awards
Marketing Week are seeking nominations for the ‘brand of the year’ category at the Masters of Marketing Awards, held at this year’s Festival of Marketing. They’re on the hunt for their readers to name the brand whose work has impressed them the most in 2015.

The Masters of Marketing is a new way of celebrating the most inspirational work in the marketing industry. The ‘brand of the year’ must be capable of showing the power of marketing to the wider business community, as well as demonstrating marketing excellence to their consumers.

To find out how to nominate, click here.

2. How Instagram is changing the way brands look at photography, online and beyond

Instagram has completely reinvented the way people see themselves and others. Design teams are beginning to see the benefits of moving away from over-edited photography and instead are favouring Instagram’s more organic look.

As Nathan Iverson states, evp and design director at Deutsch LA, “Instagram certainly isn’t pioneering the use of effects, but it is resurrecting and evolving an old-school aesthetic”. For advertisers, the network has quickly become one of the top ad platforms for major brands, so designers are beginning to move from traditional designs in favour of content that looks more natural.

Click here for more information.

3. How to stop referral spam from screwing up your Google Analytics stats

Google Analytics users will know the dreaded task of finding ways to stop referral spam, but we might have found the solution. Referral spam has been a trend for the last year or two, and is virtually impossible to prevent. It occurs when some corrupt website owner attempts to send bogus referral traffic to a website or product; however this is not actual traffic.

So how do we get rid of referral spam? Econsultancy shows us how Google Analytics filtering allows the website owner to filter out any concerning referral traffic so they can’t interfere in the future.

To find out how to do so, click here.

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#MarketingTitbits – Periscope, millennials and social media platforms

periscope-millennials-social-smaller1. Periscope has 10 million users but advertising is ‘nowhere near top of mind’
Since its launch back in March, Periscope has gained huge popularity and has gone on to sign up more than 10 million users. Yet despite reaching this impressive milestone, Periscope’s CEO, Kayvon Beykpour, has said that the company is not focused on users, but engagement levels instead.

Unlike parent company Twitter, the platform is choosing to brush big marketing campaigns to the side so that investment can be made into developing their product. However, Periscope is not the only live streaming service available, as established sites such as Facebook begin to join the band wagon.

Find out more on their unusual approach by clicking here.

2. Millennials and mobile: what marketers need to know

Millennials are often a mystery to marketers; they have never experienced a world without the internet and will soon account for one third of all retail spending. But one thing that millennials are not a supporter of is traditional advertising.

According to a new article by Econsultancy, marketers need to catch their attention by appealing to their sense of adventure through curating content that is amusing, exciting and entertaining. Millennials value personalisation with a brand, and with more looking to vloggers or social media sites for inspiration, this is more important than ever.

Click here to find out more.

3. 7 social media platforms that could explode before 2016

During the last decade, social media has experienced exponential growth thanks to the opportunities that it provides to the modern marketer. Forbes has compiled a list of the top 7 platforms that could explode onto the scene this year and threaten the reign of Facebook and Twitter.

The list features fairly new companies such as presentation sharing site, Slideshare, and Hyper, which combine the ideas behind the likes of Instagram and Reddit. However, the inclusion of one of the ‘original’ social networks may surprise you.

Take a look at the full list here.

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#MarketingTitbits – social media, Anchorman, Google

socialmedia-anchorman-google-smaller1. 9 ways social media marketing will change in 2014
 Social media is one of the fastest developing industries out there today. New social networking sites can grow almost overnight and can fizzle away before you’ve even noticed them, for this reason it is essential that marketers keep up!

This week, we saw an interesting article from Mashable that outlines how 9 successful entrepreneurs plan to change their social media marketing in the coming year based on their predictions.

These predictions include “Social won’t be used for sales.” And “LinkedIn will become the most important publisher” but to have a look at the full list and the basis on which they have been predicted, click here.

 

2. What Anchorman 2 taught us about content marketing

During the run up to the release of Anchorman 2, Ron Burgundy and the Channel 4 News Team were everywhere. Not only did Ron himself feature in a series of Chrysler adverts – his presence lead a 40% increase in Durango Dodge sales. Mr Burgundy appeared on radio stations, collected an award at the MTV Movie Awards (on behalf of an absent Will Ferrell) and released an autobiography.

Clearly – there are many lessons that can be learnt from Anchorman 2’s marketing, especially for content marketing. To have a look at what these lessons are, click here.

 

3. 12 inspiring marketing campaigns from Google

It is arguable that Google doesn’t need to market itself, with 2,161,530,000,000 searches in 2013 alone. However, whether or not this is necessary, they still do. Like many things they do, Google do their marketing well. From email marketing, billboards, Google+ marketing and TV ads, we’ve found an article the showcases Google’s most inspiring marketing campaigns.

To take a look at them and read more, click here.

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#MarketingTitbits – Amazon, MAS#TAGS, curling

books-mashtags-curling-smaller-11. Amazon’s 100 books everyone should read in their lifetime
Amazon Book editors have recently published a “bucket list of books to create a well-read life” that “over many months, the team passionately debated and defended.” They decided that the list should be in alphabetical order “because our assumption is that no book is more important than another.”

The list encompasses books old and new, the oldest being Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice of 1813. From Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone toGreat Expectations and everything in between, look at the complete list here.

 

2. Birdseye creates Mashtags – the new social media potato snack

As we’re sure you are already aware, social media is a hot topic. Millions of people, young and old, use social networking sites all over the world and along with the use of social media, has come a change in the vocabulary we use. Last year the word “Selfie” was announced as The Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year, alongside this, “hashtag” has also become an increasingly prominent word in today’s society.

Many businesses have welcomed social media with open arms and have used it to their advantage, but Birdseye have come up with a whole new spin on it. They have released a brand new potato snack called Mashtags, essentially potato smileys in the shape of social media icons. To read more, click here. 

 

3. Sir David Attenborough provides curling’s best description yet

In recognition of British Curling Olympic success, we thought we’d point you in the direction of this. If you listen to the Radio 1 weekday drive time show you might have already heard the charming description of curling from Sir David Attenborough. The English broadcaster was a guest on Greg James’ show last week and Greg asked him to read a description of curling, the result was both hilarious and enchanting and we recommend giving it a listen here.

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