The importance of context in social media advertising

Posted on August 17, 2015 by The Future of Marketing

I’m about as passionate about all things marketing as is healthy (and maybe just a little more) – but a recent experience has firmed up the importance of context.

Let me explain.

In trying to determine where is the best place to promote your products or services the conversation must extend beyond just where your customers are. It must also ask ‘why are they there?’

I’ve been subjected to an assault recently when on Facebook by a crowd who call themselves ‘Luv for Marketing’.

Firstly, I’ve (almost) forgiven them for their ‘down with the kids’ name and since they’re appearing on my news feed I’m assuming that even as a 40 year old they do think they have something to offer me.

This is not the problem however.

The problem is that when I’m on Facebook that’s not what I’m there for.

I’m there for lots of other reasons – the vast majority of them recreational. Latest sports news, checking the build up to some upcoming events and – let’s be honest – being nosey.

Luv for Marketing appear on the surface to have got everything right – I’m interested in their subject matter and they’ve crafted concise yet descriptive ads which indicate to me that they’d be worth looking into further.

But the fact is that I’ve seen the ad more than 50 times now and haven’t once clicked the ‘learn more’ button.

Why?

Because in that place (Facebook) at that time (downtime after work) I’ve had my fill of marketing for the day.

If, on the other hand, they’d got at me through LinkedIn while I was updating my company page it’s more than likely that I would have acted on their prompts before now.

While this is just my own personal experience with one particular advertiser I think it raises some interesting questions around context and timing when considering our marketing messages.

Disclaimer:
This post is in no way a negative comment on the services that Luv for Marketing offer or their marketing approach. It is simply my own experience of their Facebook marketing which I hope is working fabulously well for them.

If anyone from Luv for Marketing should read this post – get in touch. I’m interested.

If you’d like some help defining the necessary context for your social media advertising then get in touch.

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Dealing with the Digital Skills Gap

Posted on February 22, 2015 by The Future of Marketing

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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Pinterest ‘failing to add value for brands’

Posted on January 28, 2015 by The Future of Marketing

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:

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?
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.
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.
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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Content Marketing – still to be convinced? Read this.

Posted on December 2, 2014 by The Future of Marketing

Use content marketing as a magnet for new customers

There are some compelling stats out there supporting the rise of content marketing over the last few years – the number of web searches for ‘content marketing’ has increased by 400% since 2010 (stats from Google Trends) and there are now 27 million pieces of content shared online every day (according to AOL).

These 2 stats are taken from a great blog post by @captora last week called ‘20 tweetable content marketing stats that every marketer should know’.

I published a post last week in response to this attempting to delve a little deeper. While the figures are undoubtedly useful for reinforcing the importance of content marketing to any modern marketing strategy I feel that there is a need to look at what questions they provoke.

The 2 most important questions for me are:

What does this mean for your company?
What can you do about it?

My previous post dealt with the 2 stats mentioned earlier about the 400% increase in searches for ‘content marketing’ and the 27 million pieces of content shared online every day. You can read my thoughts on this by visiting the post – Need convinced about content marketing? Read this.

For today, I’d like to focus on another stat from the @captora post and answer the 2 questions posed above:

Stat #1
78% of consumers think organisations that create content are interested in building relationships.

What does this mean for your company?

This one stat alone sums up one of the major opportunities that exists with content marketing. For decades marketing departments were engaged in the game of producing content and hoping that the relationships you had developed with your target print publications would mean that your news release, project case study or company announcement would get featured.

In most cases the only way to really ensure this happened was to part with some of your hard earned budget and invest in advertising.

Of course the best print publications maintain a level of editorial integrity (and that is how they have survived) but content marketing represents a huge shift in the balance of power. We’re all publishers now and the technologies that facilitate the content marketing revolution have added a level of democracy to our communications that didn’t previously exist.

For the first time it’s genuinely not about how much advertising spend you want to commit to a specific publication in order to ensure the required level of editorial coverage.

You produce your own content and publish it. If it’s good enough it will gain traction online with your customers, increase your profile and ultimately help you achieve your goals whatever they may be.

Another benefit of this development is that your brand can have a voice and the opportunity to communicate directly with your target audience rather than being run through the editorial controls of your target print publications.

This helps to better portray the personality of your organisation which allows your potential customers to establish whether it is an organisation that they would like to do business with.

What can you do about it?

In order to maximise the chances of success from your content marketing strategy there is an old saying that was a particular favourite of the sales director of a company I used to work for:

“You have 2 ears and one mouth – use them in that proportion.”

Your first job in trying to take advantage of the content marketing opportunity involves listening and observing what is going on in the virtual world around us.

What online channels are your customers currently using?
What are the current issues within your industry that your products or services help to address?
What have you got to say about these issues?
What are your competitors currently saying about these issues and how can you differentiate your message?

Once you’ve got the answers to these questions you’ll be in a much better position to understand the kind of content you can produce in order to help you achieve your goals of more leads, more sales, more donations, more applications for the job you’re promoting (or whatever else is relevant for your business).

In summary, content marketing represents a huge opportunity for any business for whom their customer base is online. While the headline stats from the @captora post confirm this you need to understand what it means for your business and what you should be doing about it. Once you’ve nailed these two questions then the opportunity will begin to open up in front of you.

And you’ll enjoy the benefits offline as well – after all. you’re producing great content tackling the main issues facing your industry. What print publications aren’t going to be interested in that story?

If you’d like some help developing your content marketing strategy or producing the content you need to build your profile then get in touch.

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