Category Archives: Content Marketing

Forget logic. Make people love what you’re selling

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make people love what you're sellingWe all like to believe that we buy stuff sensibly. We carefully consider all the options available. We weigh up the pros and cons of each available choice.

And the use of return on investment calculations isn’t the preserve of the B2B market – think of the last time you bought a car. I’m sure you considered running costs – fuel consumption, tax implications, service and maintenance charges.

So we’re all driven by logic and reasoning and as long as anyone trying to sell us something convinces us that theirs is the most cost effective choice or the choice that will last the longest or simply makes the most sense then they’re onto a winner.

Wrong.

In the centre of all of our brains is an area called the limbic system. This is where all our emotional experiences start. It’s where we experience love, happiness, joy. It’s also where we experience pain, hurt, anger.

And it is here that the vast majority of the buying decisions you make are made. The exact number is subject to some debate but it’s somewhere between 80% and 90%.

So our buying decisions aren’t based on logic at all but a simple desire to have something – that beautiful car, the stylish house, a new coat.

What then happens is we try to rationalise the desire we have for the new thing which is when we start using the neocortex – the part of the brain responsible for information processing among other things.

The car – 30mpg isn’t that bad and I don’t really do too many miles anyway so it won’t hurt that much.

The new coat – I haven’t got a blue one and it’ll go with loads of my other clothes so I’ll definitely get my money’s worth.

The new 60 inch TV – I’m only getting it so I can enjoy watching the sports in the house. Think of the money I’ll save by not going to the pub to watch the game.

If we made every buying decision using only logic and reasoning we would only buy things that we need.

Every car on the road would be the most fuel efficient one available.

Every coat would be designed for a specific purpose – rain protection, winter sports – with no consideration for aesthetics.

And in the age of online reviews the only products to sell would be those with faultless 5 star reviews.

Thankfully this is not the case.

What it means for anyone selling anything is that it is essential to understand what it is about your product that will trigger the necessary emotional reaction from your customers.

Of course this is much easier for retail, fashion and mass market consumer brands than it is for those in the B2B market but with a bit of careful thought you can find your product’s emotional trigger.

It may be the design of your product that seals the deal. Go the extra mile with the design of your product – think about form as well as function and you’ll increase your chance of success.

Don’t worry if you’re selling services – you can play this game too. We’re social animals – so use the currency that your personality represents. Be transparent and authentic and you’ll establish meaningful relationships with your customers that are very hard to break.

Stand for something – display your passion for what it is you do. People don’t buy what you do – they buy why you do it. By showing that you really care about delivering the best solution to their problem what you’re saying is ‘I won’t let you down’.

So let’s put the return on investment sheet to one side for the minute and get to work on nailing down the ways that you can make your customers feel more connected emotionally to your products or services.

This requires that you have an in-depth understanding of who your customers are and what their specific needs are. This has to go beyond their job title and their role in the procurement process as this alone just will not give you the insights you need.

You need to understand their daily frustrations – the pain points in their everyday existence that your product can help to overcome. Once you’ve done this you can craft your marketing messages to push these buttons.

If you’d like to read more about the part emotions plat in your decision making then I’ve included a few links below to some articles that I found interesting:

Decisions are emotional, not logical – the neuroscience behind decision making.

Delving into the logical and emotional sides of the human brain.

If you would like some help understanding the emotional triggers that will allow you to sell more effectively then get in touch:

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Dealing with the Digital Skills Gap

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Digital Marketing Strategy Petrac Marketing

Digital marketing is an essential part of the modern marketing mix

With the amount of technology now available and the pace of change it’s never been as challenging for anyone working in marketing to understand all of the channels that are available when trying to get your product or service to market.

This has led to the creation of new Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing roles  – but I can’t help feeling that this is just an abdication of responsibility by those in charge.

Digital is simply a delivery mechanism for all your marketing efforts. There is no digital marketing – it’s just modern marketing.

In an increasing number of organisations there is a recognition that there is a skills gap in relation to digital marketing. However, it’s the response to this problem that I think is focused in the wrong place.

For too many companies and organisations this skills gap is addressed by the creation of a new role within the marketing team – Digital Marketing Executive, Social Media Marketing Executive being two such positions.

I don’t think anyone would argue that digital marketing represents a huge part of the modern marketing mix – so surely there is a requirement that every member of your marketing team is a digital marketer?

When creating the person specifications for all members of your marketing team surely some sort of digital capability must be included in the ‘essential skills’ box?

You wouldn’t employ a software engineer without the relevant qualifications. You wouldn’t employ a engineer without knowing that they had training in the relevant engineering discipline. You wouldn’t employ an accountant who hadn’t had the appropriate training.

The same should apply with your marketing team. Creating separate digital marketing roles is simply abdicating responsibility for digital to a single person in order to avoid having to learn about it yourself.

Digital marketing is no longer a ‘nice to have’ for anyone working in marketing. It’s essential that you have these skills or you will end up being surplus to requirements.

The other side of the same coin is that by skilling yourself up in all things digital you are giving yourself a serious competitive advantage over a lot of other people.

There’s simply no excuse any more – there are shed loads of formal digital qualifications out there and as much online content as you can cope with.

As with anything though the only way to really get it and understand how you can use it to improve your business results is to get involved.

So stop passing the responsibility on to others and embrace the challenge and the opportunity that digital marketing presents.

Get started now – Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing from the Digital Marketing Institute (Ireland and UK)

If you would like some help working out how you can take advantage of digital within your marketing strategy then get in touch.

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7 Reasons Why Bad Website Design Decisions Get Made

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I cam across this great post on why bad website design decisions get made (published on the Tribute Media website).

Of the 7 points that are made there is a common theme that runs through them all.

In far too many cases the decisions that are made about the best design are too focused on what the organisation would like to achieve rather than what the visitors to your website are there for in the first place.

This is a result of the focus being in the wrong place – too much time is spent on coming up with a website design that gets the approval of the powers that be. The damaging effect of this is to further disconnect your website from the people who will be using it.

At the very outset of your website design journey you should be spending a lot of time researching who it is that visits your website and what they want to do when they get there.

7 Reasons Why Bad Website Design Decisions Get Made.

why bad website design decisions are made

7 reasons why bad website design decisions get made – original post from Tribute Media

All of this information is very easy to get:

Have a look at your current website analytics – there is a wealth of information in here about current user behaviour. Where are your users coming from? What content is most popular? Where are your poorly performing pages?

in addition to this you should be profiling your different website users – creating personas for the people who visit your website is a very useful exercise that will allow you to better understand how to deliver a positive website experience for your visitors.

This can be easily achieved by talking to the customer facing people within your organisation. Your sales team is the obvious first step but don’t ignore the others in your organisation that can add some serious value to this process.

If you discover that you are selling to procurement departments, then involve your own in this profiling exercise as you’ll often find that what is important to them gives you an insight into what motivates your customers’ buying decisions.

The same is true if you find that you are selling to accountants – increasingly it is accountants who occupy the Managing Director or CEO position. Involving your own Finance Director or CFO will allow you to expand your awareness of what questions these people are likely to want answered when considering buying a product like yours.

It is this focus on your visitors that will allow you to create a website that will ultimately deliver you increased conversions – whatever that conversion may be. It could be increased sales, increased white paper or brochure downloads, increased enquiry levels, increased registrations for the event you are running, increased donations for your charitable cause.

Whatever sector you are operating in – public, private or third sector – the process should be the same.

In my experience a lot of the conflict and pain of a new website design project is as a result of a misplaced focus on the subjective elements of the website design.

It is virtually impossible to get a cross section of people to agree on a design that they all like – we all prefer different websites for different reasons. When your project uses consensus on the design of your new site as the starting point or your project it is destined to take longer than you originally planned for, cost more than you originally planned for and – most importantly – deliver a website that it not configured to achieve its objectives for improving business results.

Your website is not a vanity project – it’s a project that when delivered correctly will deliver real, tangible, positive results for your company or organisation. But only if you get back to the science of the process and remove subjective decision making.

7 Reasons Why Bad Website Design Decisions Get Made.

If you would like some help with your website project then get in touch:

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Viral isn’t a valuable endgame

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It seems that everyone is searching for the silver bullet that will allow them to create viral campaigns at will. I think this is a problem.

The endless focus on viral and how it can be achieved suggests to me that there is a misconception that a viral campaign is the single key performance indicator that matters. The suggestion here is that viral automatically equals success. While there is no doubt that this is the case in some instances I think there are more than enough examples of viral campaigns that simply haven’t worked – they haven’t delivered any significant business result.

I’ll illustrate this by looking at examples of 2 viral campaigns – both of which would have been described as successful if the only measure was whether they achieved the ‘viral’ badge of honour.

One of the best examples of a successful viral campaign is the ongoing campaign run by Blendtec to promote the blenders that they produce. This is one of the most often quoted examples of successful viral campaigns and it’s easy to see why. They didn’t just create one video that went viral – they’ve managed to sustain their success over a reasonably long period of time (digital years, as we all know are like dog years in fast forward).

Their video showing the blending of an iPad using a Blendtec blender has to date had almost 17 ½ million views on their Youtube channel. The iPhone in the blender has had 12 ¼ million views. Other products that have had the Blendtec treatment include golf balls, crowbars, magnets and marbles.

You can watch all of the Blendtec videos on their Youtube channel – https://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec

So why did it work?

The Blendtec story has so many factors that made it successful – the first video that went viral was simply the delivery mechanism for the campaign.

First of all, they have a great product – the rationale for putting all this weird and wonderful stuff through a blender was to demonstrate the strength of the blender. If it can blend an iPad or a golf ball it’s going to have no problem making your breakfast smoothie. So the campaign had a clear purpose – demonstrate one of the key unique selling points of the product.

Secondly, it’s a mass market product. Achieving almost 30 million views for the iPad and iPhone videos is a step in the right direction for Blendtec in making their product more well known and more desirable. The potential for people to decide to buy a Blendtec blender is almost beyond comprehension – it’s not inconceivable that every home in the world could have a Blendtec blender.

The key thing that determines whether the Blendtec campaign was a success is the difference it made to their sales numbers. The results here are astounding – in 2009 it was reported that after the first 186 videos sales were up 700%.

All of this was possible because the campaign had a clear purpose and a solid business behind it.

You can read a case study of the Blendtec story at http://www.socialens.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/20090127_case_blendtec11.pdf

This is a viral campaign that worked – not because it went viral but because it delivered a significant business result.

Equally, there are mass market brands that try and run viral campaigns that aren’t as successful. One of the best to illustrate the point that viral alone doesn’t mean success was done by Kodak back in 2007.

In the absence of the video you can read an online article detailing the success of the campaign at http://adage.com/article/digital/kodak-s-deprecating-house-video-viral/114076/

Kodak viral video

Headline from a Adage article on the famous Kodak viral campaign

This video sought to address the perception that Kodak was a tired old brand that had been left behind by the digital photography boom. They had failed to spot the changing demands of their customers and they tackled this issue head on with the launch of a video which was very self deprecating – admitting all the mistakes of the past and recent present but promising that it was all about to change.

Personally, this was one of the best videos that I ever watched online – but despite numerous searches it’s just not available any more. Why? Because in 2009 the company went out of business.

While the campaign achieved the objective of going viral it didn’t make one blind bit of difference to the prospects for the company. Why? Because viral isn’t a healthy objective to have for any campaign.

The Kodak campaign was destined to fail because it had no purpose other than going viral, no substance to back up the claims they made in their video. They may have talked about embracing the digital revolution and to watch out for all the new technology that they were about to unleash on the market. But the fact was that they didn’t have any of this. It was an elaborate cover story to try and buy some time.

I bet when the Kodak video went viral the agency involved and the Kodak marketing team were busy patting themselves on the back about what a wonderful job they had just done. For them, the viral video was evidence of success. The proof that this has no foundation is what happened to Kodak in 2009 when they closed their doors.

I think these two campaigns represent the 2 extremes of viral campaigns.

Blendtec is a great sales, marketing and product development story that demonstrates the value in understanding your customers, understanding your product and having a clear objective for your campaigns.

Kodak is an example of viral for the sake of viral. That’s as much substance as there was. Was it clever? Yes. Was it funny? Yes. Did it reach a massive audience? Yes. Did it work? No.

What this says for me in that in the midst of this technological age success in sales, marketing and business in general is still down to a few good old fashioned things:

A great product, in the right market, at the right price, delivered through the best sales channel with superior customer support and  a great sales team.

Get these basics right and your success will be long term and tangible rather than a flash in the pan viral campaign.

I’m reminded here of a previous post on this blog, the title of which seems very relevant. Consistency is far better than rare moments of greatness.

 

Create your own images for free

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There are numerous online image creation tools available but the one I’m using most the minute is Canva.

There are so many templates available for you to use so whether you’re looking for a simple facebook or twitter header profile, business cards, posters or infographics they have made it so easy to use.

canva design templates

Just some of the free image templates available on Canva

The process is really simple – you select from a range of design templates and then customise it with your own text and images. As a starter the free templates offer more than enough scope for you to explore the capability of the system.

There is of course a library of premium themes which you can access – I haven’t found any need to use these yet but they do offer expanded libraries of design templates and more flexibility when it comes to layouts.

As well as all the social media images you can create I also use the tool to help create images for sales presentations to existing and potential clients. The image sizes are designed to fit with Powerpoint / Keynote and are really quick and easy to create.

Presentation powerpoint image Canva

Presentation image created using Canva

For beginners on the system there is a Canva Design School  which contains a library of tutorials on how to use the system.

Canva design school create images for free

The Canva design school tutorials

You can also browse the design school by category to find help with the specific project that you’re working on.

Canva Design school categories

Browse by category on the Canva Design School

Once you’ve created your free images you can either keep them private or share them to show others the designs you have created. Even if you want to keep your own images private you can search the Canva Stream to see the most recently published images. This is a great resource for finding out how you could use the system for yourself.

Canva design stream create your own free images

Canva design stream shows the most recently created images

If you’d like any help discovering how you can use Canva to benefit your business then get in touch:

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Pinterest ‘failing to add value for brands’

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pinterest fails to add value for brands

Pinterest ‘failing to add value for brands’ according to a report from Forrester

I came across an interesting post on the Marketing Week website(UK) recently in relation to the ‘Promoted Pins’ feature on social networking site, Pinterest. The article revealed that a report from Forrester indicated that the majority of brands that are using the Pinterest ad platform are struggling to get any value from it.

The Promoted Pins feature is soon to arrive in the UK market and I am sure that agencies up and down the country will be rushing to spend their client’s hard earned cash on this shiny new platform.

The article is – in my humble opinion – an indication of a wider problem with the choice of the best social networks to use for advertising. Rather than take the report from Forrester as an indication that Pinterest is of no value to advertisers I think that the problem actually lies with the advertisers themselves putting the technology first rather than their own individual business requirements.

This is not a phenomenon that is exclusive to Pinterest – I think every social media platform is having millions of pounds / dollars / euros wasted on it every day. It’s not because there is no value to be gained from advertising on these platforms – but because the wrong people are advertising.

As soon as the latest trendy social media platform becomes open for advertisers it seems that companies are flocking to their doors to spend their hard earned cash. The problem is that these decisions to advertise on Pinterest and other platforms seem to be based on the fact that Pinterest is the latest hot social media property rather than any meaningful research that suggests Pinterest will represent a good return on investment.

By asking a few simple questions before jumping on the latest social media platform you can eliminate this problem and make sure that you get the best bang for your buck:

  1. Understand the demographics of the users of the social media network – what is the user profile and what are they looking for when they are there?
  2. Understand whether this demographic matches your target audience – all you’ve done at this stage is identify a potential advertising platform. There is still work to do before you can make an informed decision.
  3. Understand why your customers are using the social media network – if you’re selling in a B2B environment be careful. Just because your customers may use the network doesn’t mean that they are in buying mode when they are there. It may be a social thing where they keep in touch with friends and they may not be open to be sold to.
  4. Do your research – find out some case studies for how other people are successfully using the social media network and use this to inform your decisions about how you can design a campaign that will make you money.

Once you’ve done all of this you can be much more comfortable with your decision to advertise. There is no doubt that this process will mean that on some occasions your decision will be not to advertise on the latest trendy offering that social media world has to offer. And that’s OK. Especially when you’re reporting on the return that your advertising revenue is generating.

Read the full Pinterest article on the Marketing Week website – Pinterest failing to add value for brands

(You’ll need to register – which is free – in order to read the article).

If you would like some help building your social media or content marketing strategy then get in touch:

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Some great advice from none other than Roald Dahl

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I came across this little gem on Twitter recently. Jay Williams wrote to Roald Dahl in 1980 asking for some advice on a short story he had written. The response from Roald Dahl is blunt – but gives some great advice on how to write better stories.

IMG_4866

The success of your video depends on your script

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writing case studies belfast

Get your video script right to maximise the success of your videos

YouTube – The 2nd most popular search engine in the world.

Whatever you’re selling, whatever you’re looking for its the first port of call.

The rise in the significance of video in the modern marketing mix has been nothing short of astonishing. It reaches across almost all sectors and products – it’s firmly established as part of the online research process.

No matter what you’re selling, where you’re selling it or who you’re selling it to I am pretty sure that there is a role for video in your marketing mix.

As for your customers – you know they’re on YouTube. Everyone is. So if you’re not producing video then get to it.

You don’t need big production budgets – the self service video edit packages have it all.

You don’t need expensive soundtracks – there is a mass of music out there and available for pennies.

You do however need a good script. For far too many people this is the end point – it should be the starting point.

Does this process sound familiar:

  1. Start writing your story based on the message you want to get across.
  2. Realise it’s far too long – but can’t decide where the edits need to be.

As a general rule of thumb your video should be about 90 seconds long – and definitely no longer than 2 mins.

That means that you’re shooting for somewhere around 250 to 350 words for your script.

The only way you’ll achieve this is if your video has a specific purpose.

Most of the time it will require a good script writer to nail the message within the constraints you have. You’re too close – an outsider can extract the real hard hitting points that you want to get across.

The tone is particularly important with a video script – just because something reads well doesn’t mean it will work as a script.

Record it yourself on your phone and listen back. I have a very simple rule – if there’s anything on there that you’re not sure is 110% right then bin it and start over.

The end result – a video that’s half as long as the one you would have made yourself but has twice the impact.

If you would like to talk about how you can introduce video to your marketing mix or would like some help producing a script for your latest video project then get in touch.

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Why you should outsource your PR

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peter craven blog petrac marketing

PR is an essential part of your marketing mix

PR has never been as important – Google has turned everyone into a researcher. Booking a holiday used to involve a 20 minute conversation with a travel agent. Not any more. People are now prepared to invest days of their own time building their own summer holiday through cheap airline sites in combination with Tripadvisor and other similar sites.

Whatever industry you’re in, whatever you’re selling, you can guarantee that at some point during the buying cycle your customer will spend a significant amount of time researching both on and offline. A well developed and executed PR strategy will help you maximise the opportunity that this offers.

Developing and executing a successful PR strategy requires substantial time and effort. Time and effort that I know from experience that marketing departments just don’t have enough of. Putting the content plan together at the start of the year is the easy bit – but how many of your releases either don’t get written at all or get cobbled together in a panic as a result of a last minute notice of an editorial deadline?

There are many reasons why outsourcing your PR makes sense and I have outlined some of these below:

1 – Maximise your return on investment

It will allow you to maximise the potential that the medium offers for getting your message out there by receiving free coverage in your target publications. Any investment you make in PR must take into account the equivalent cost of buying this space in trade magazines. The fact that an external PR partner will be focusing on this and this alone ensures a far better return on your investment than if you try and manage the process yourself.

2 – Creating targeted content with an increased potential for placement

Relationship building with editors and journalists is key to success – and once again I know from experience that while this is a great idea, most marketing departments just don’t have the time to do this properly. The result is a lot of guesswork about what material you should send to your target publications. By outsourcing your PR you can remove this guesswork from the equation – we understand what different editors are looking for in a story, what the editorial priorities are for specific magazines, what issues they struggle to gather regular content for. We can then use these insights to inform your editorial plan – maximising the potential for free coverage in your target publications.

3 – Better, deeper, more insightful content

We can get insights from within your organisation that you may struggle to uncover. Once we’ve identified the thought leaders within your organisation we can spend time with them to gather their thoughts on the relevant industry topics that are going to get us the most coverage. I know – from experience – that when you try and do this internally the regular meeting just gets pushed further and further back until you eventually just delete it from your outlook calendar. Not only is the meeting much more likely to happen when it’s being facilitated externally but with proper preparation and structure we can get much more valuable information from the meeting. Information which will provide content for several new items for your editorial calendar.

4 – Content Marketing in action

It’s your content marketing strategy in action. Producing all the content that your content marketing strategy requires is something that I bet you and your team just don’t have time to do. So leave it to us. We can work closely with you to make sure that it delivers all that you require in terms of coverage, increased web traffic, increased enquiry levels, increased downloads – whatever your specific goals are.

5 – Quality & quantity: the best of both worlds

The only way to be a really good writer is to write a lot – we do. Everyday. It’s not rocket science. The more you practice something the better you get at it. When you’re working within a marketing team you have so much going on that you just don’t have the time to write as much as we do. By outsourcing your PR you are investing in the quality of your press releases, news stories, white papers, case studies. This will lead to more coverage for your material – in an environment where layers of editorial oversight have been stripped away from the vast majority of publications they are crying out for copy that is sent to them ready for publication. By employing a professional copywriter to produce your content you will get better results from your PR activity.

If project case studies are important for you then we can help you make these have maximum impact. The key to good project case studies is understanding the key reasons why your customer bought from you in the first place and what benefits they have enjoyed since.

This is where it goes wrong for most companies producing their own material. All too often the case study turns into a description of the features and benefits of what you sell rather than a true project case study. We can get in front of your customers – because we have the time to do so. This results in is getting the insights necessary to allow us to produce a case study that your potential customers can relate to. And who knows – it may just uncover some additional sales opportunities with your existing customer that you just weren’t aware of.

It’s about your return on investment:

There’s a recurring theme here – the reason you should outsource your
PR is quite simply to get a better return on your investment.

If you would like some help developing your PR strategy or content plan and then executing a campaign that delivers for your business then get in touch:

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Build Your Content Calendar: 3 Easy Steps

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As we enter a New Year I’m sure you’re all thinking about your content marketing calendar for 2015.

There is a great article on the Content Marketing Institute website from October 2013 that offers some great advice. (The article was originally published by Shanna Mallon).

The success of the article for me lies in how simple the process actually is. There are only 3 things that you need to do in order to get you started:

Understand your sales cycle – if there are seasonal variations in your business then set your distribution plan accordingly. Understand when your customers are likely to be looking for your products and make sure you have set a plan in place to distribute relevant information at the right time.

Brainstorm topics and align them to categories – what are the questions that your customers want answered? what problems are your customers having that they would like help solving? what content can you offer that proves that you will be the right choice to do this?

Set your content calendar – Now it’s just about putting the plan in place for what content you produce and when you produce it. The plan should also take account of how your customers like to consume information – technical articles, project case studies, videos, white papers, videos etc. A good content marketing plan will include a mix of all of these (and more) which is tailored to the specific requirements of your customers.

It’s that simple. So stop putting it off and just get started.

You can read the original article from Shanna Mallon at the link below:

Build Your Content Calendar: 3 Easy Steps.

If you would like some help building your content marketing plan or producing your targeted content then get in touch:

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