Thanks to my good friend Dominic Campbell for sharing this from Doug Ray… see later update below
Doug Ray's "Social Media Explained" infographic
Update 09/02/12: Here’s the blog post behind the meme ThreeShipsMedia did it for an inside joke, Doug snapped an instagram picture of it, it went viral – they didn’t plan any of it…. sometimes good fortune favours the brave. Well done to the whole team.
A Comment Aside
Why ThreeShipsMedia doesn’t allow comments on their blog is beyond me. I’d see this wonderful viral incident as a perfect customer acquisition tool for their own business. Since they apparently specialise in customer acquisition, are they missing a trick on their own watch?
There’s a nice wrapper around the B2B marketing magazine this month and I sat down for a quiet lunchtime read today. Nicely constructed to resemble a normal front page with the magazine logo in corporate green, the headline is “Brand Augmentation – experience it with us” and a Gravity Global apple image.
What a great message. Seemed like a good new business tool for a creative agency.
The copy invites readers to download the app from the Itunes store and ‘point your iPhone at this cover”. So I did.
Sad failure
The app instructs you to point your iPhone at the black marker on our business card (or the magazine cover).
What is a ‘marker’?
I think they mean the black frame around their name with the apple picture. A further description says that a globe is supposed to appear and you can point at any one of the offices and see a video about them and get in touch.
I pointed, I waited, I moved my finger across the screen. It went pink for a bit and then back to showing the photo it was pointed at.
What a shame.
Why the campaign doesn’t work
There are several reasons why this is a failed campaign. You need to know where your dollars are being spent and how successfully they are returning enquring prospects to your agency. And this campaign fails on several levels:
- The “lowest common denominator” factor was not considered. I used to call this the “David Baker Test” [ask me why]. What about the prospect who either can’t or won’t take the action you request? How to deal with her.
- Consider the customer who doesn’t own Apple products – can she see your message?
- Alternative browsing methods weren’t offered – iPad, iPod, web page, pdf document. All possible alternatives.
- Android and BlackBerry versions not offered – an insult to those businesses who didn’t choose Apple phones for their staff
- Wait and see….. I downloaded it but is there any follow-up or tracking to see if I also visit their site?
So although it’s a great idea to use the tools of expertise you have to sell to clients in your own creative agency promotion, consider your audience and offer a solution that any person with a web browser can use to get to your company information.
You try it… Apple App Store search for Gravity Global World 
We had a little hissy-fit rant about Scribd a while back. I’d like to formally apologise for shooting my mouth off too early.
Scribd has added new features – and they look pretty useful for content creators.
The main thing that has been added is Analytics. Scribd has made a dashboard that looks a lot like google analytics.
It includes helpful data on:
- Document views by day graph
- Document “reads”, “Embed reads”, “Readcasts” and an overall engagement score
- Views by region / geography
- Search key words
- Top referrers
Which begins to make the service look more useful as a business development tool.
Business model revised
It seems that Scribd has revised its “free to anyone” business model to one based more on “Give and take”. When it first launched there was little difference between Scribd and Slideshare – both enabled documents to be uploaded and shared. And its sign-up self-promotion annoyed me.
Recently I was tempted back by a search that linked to a great document upload. And I found that Scribd now has refined its business model. You can read any document free. But if you want to download one – you have to reciprocate by uploading one of your own.
I wonder if it keeps tabs on the number of uploads / downloads each user does…. maybe I should keep a list of future documents to upload but not until I’ve found one I want to download.
Anyone else tried it out?
New Business Development
If yoiu are using content creation as part of your business development tactics this is pretty handy.
- First – ensure you have lots of links into your website from any documents you upload
- Second – add to Scribd any of the e-books, how-to manuals and expert guides that you have on your blog or website
- Third – use good tags and key words to describe them in the upload
- Fourth – come back and check for views / downloads and other analytics.
One of the most basic human emotions is wanting to feel trusted and ‘in the know’. And from a marketers’ perspective we can capitalise on this by allowing sneak previews of new products and services to trusted groups of customers.
Take a read about how this startup only messaged hints through the founder’s twitter feed.
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Image by glennharper via Flickr
Do relationships matter more than marketing or advertising for B2B?
There is some truth in this but it is often over-stated.
Many web experts talk about the glorious ‘free’ things that come to them just because of their relationship and web presence – but we believe that without a proven track record in the area of expertise – this is all wishful thinking.
Srini Rao wrote a nicely titled post about how relationship marketing helped him to land a dream client – read it because it sounds awesome. The plot line goes something like this – you hang out in a surf bar and drink a beer / shoot the breeze and at the end of the night the owner hires you to promote his surf travel brand.
Wow – the good life just arrived.
How did he make it happen?
I have no doubt that this really happened. Sometimes serendipity is just there for you and good things happen.
But there were several pre-conditions needed for this beautifully desirable outcome:
- Track record expertise in marketing brands
- A clear understanding of the surf marketplace (and involvement as a consumer)
- The client was ready to buy
- Give away some free advice over a couple of beers to demonstrate expertise / build the relationship
- Right place, right time, friendly fellow, made friends and KAPOW – new client.
Except for the last, every other one of these is a deal enabler.
Missing any one of them, it would have been virtually impossible for Srini to close this deal. Take our expertise in the rowing marketplace. We now have three clients who sell into the space and proposals out to two more. The last proposal happened because we were at a regatta and got chatting… in fact, read steps 1 through 5 above – that’s EXACTLY what happened. Now we’re waiting for the client to decide to hire us.
Why did this new client relationship happen?
Because of the four points listed above.
So take your business development plan and check out the steps in our biz dev methodology
1 – state your business
4 – profile raising
5 – relationship development
Each will help you position yourself appropriately to be in the right place for those relationships to blossom and hopefully you’ll also land your ‘dream’ client! Well done Srini, we applaud you.
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I have been a member of some awesome networking groups and meetups over the years -Tuttle, Cambridge Geek Night, SXSW kebab, Chinwag, London VRM, Dunedin Skeptics in the Pub. But finding and choosing a good group is a skill. Today we discuss how to get the right group for you.
First let me digress – indulge me
Becoming aware of new web services and tools is now part of my job. One of the best ways to find new tools is to have them find you first.
I’m lucky – my longstanding Twitter / Facebook / Blog means that Creative Agency Secrets or my personal Twitter account gets found for business development and B2B marketing searches. Now it’s payback time – my energies invested over the years are now sending good content, relevant tools back to me.
These people follow me and I check over every profile that is emailed over to me. some get filed into specific client or project folders for particular follow up, a direct message or a later decision about whether to follow them back.
Others are deleted – usually because I can’t see the relevance.
Which brings me back to a new tool which is a meet up group that followed me on Twitter.
Trizz.
Even the name makes my teeth grate. That’ll date, it’s too silly and it doesn’t sound like a business networking group [to be fair neither does Tuttle....]. I took a quick browse round their well-designed site and couldn’t find anything to endear it to me.
Why this group won’t work for me
- Members can exclude other businesses – that speaks volumes – it prevents the group growing in the long term and finding the ‘best’ member for each category. What if the lousiest realtor was the first to join – does that help everyone else?
- No quality control – if you are going to pay and exclude others I’d want tip top quality of members attending. People who are that good and worth meeting, don’t pay to go to groups like this. Period.
- It’s a paid for gig – I only pay for coffee when I network.
- Nobody is THAT motivated to promote other businesses all the time – the energy wanes
- Why would I want to troll my way around a heap of strangers in the hope that I’m the only representative in my ‘category’? Trizz Members may visit other Trizz Clubs as a guest as often as they like provided that club does not have a member in the same category.
- What value of new business will you get from other (desperate?) people who go to these groups just to get new business….. the world just isn’t like that any more.
If you are a local business and your clients are other locals – fine. Go for it.
For the rest of us – stay away and focus your energies on re-writing your twitter profile – it’ll win you more new business.
So you’ve written an e-book and are wondering why people haven’t tracked you down, overloaded your inbox with emails and the news of your book hasn’t spread the online world like wildfire. Well, the internet is a vast place, and you’ve got to make it easy to be found. We recently did the marketing for our client, Norman Evans, who created a great e-book titled ‘Becoming an Entrepreneur’. Below we share the secrets of marketing that we use for our own clients.
- Become a force to be reckoned with. AKA, get found. Hopefully, you have a website and you can add a blog section to it. If not, start a blog to develop a reader-base. Start writing about your area of expertise, and get the word out that you know what you’re talking about. The power of the internet lies in getting found. If you create a reader-base first, your e-book is going to sell much better. It’s all based on generating high quality content on your website, and helping people find you. You can also start a newsletter to keep track of any followers. Give them an incentive to join, by offering them special tips over time, or discounts on your products.
- Get in on the conversation. During your morning coffee, make it a habit to do a daily search on relevant content being published on other’s blogs. Read what other people have to say and contribute to the conversation. If you have something good to offer people will start searching for your name, and your own blog will come up. This is not blatant marketing, mind you. Don’t scrawl your blog site all over everyone else’s blogs in flashing letters—nobody likes that. Simply contribute to other people’s conversations in the areas of your expertise, and traffic will come to you.
- Tweet about it. Number 2 flows right into number 3 here. You already know who has good blogs out there and you’ve joined in on the conversations, now, share the gold! Tweet about those great blogs you’ve found and show that you know what great content is, even if it isn’t your own. The authors of these blogs will see that you’re linking to them, and then take a look at your blog. If they see you know your stuff, they’ll link back to you too. Do the same with Facebook, LinkedIn and any other relevant social media sites.
- Listing the book. Selling your book through a variety of websites is key. It’s this simple: the more hooks in the water, the easier it is to catch a fish. Using sites such as Amazon, Fishpond and Barnes and Noble will open you up to a bigger audience. It will also create links to a highly ranked website. In addition you can sell directly from your own website (now that you have one!).
- A discount for the loyal followers. By this time you have established a following that you are hopefully able to track, perhaps you have Facebook fans, Twitter followers, newsletter subscribers, etc. Just before your book is released offer your loyal followers a limited time ‘buy early’ discount, to get the ball rolling on sales. This also encourages more people to become your fan, or subscribe to your newsletter, etc. They get special offers from it, and honestly, who doesn’t love a discount.
Remember, like most things, persistence pays off… it may take weeks or months to get the audience and the traction that your book deserves, but keep going and little-and-often will definitely get you noticed.
We have 5 free E-books by Norman Evans to give away. Please contact us if you would like to be one of the lucky recipients! This is actually true, so hurry and send us your details and see if you get to read ‘Becoming an Entrepreneur’ for free!
Now, get out there and market your e-book and let us know how it goes!
This is part 2 of a 2 part blog post, showing a case study for a sporting brand client. This case study highlights the importance and success of content marketing for smaller businesses.
Client: Coxmate
Industry: Rowing Equipment
Date: 2011 – January – ongoing
Summary: Content Marketing, Newsletter management, trade shows, athlete endorsement
Coxmate is a producer and supplier of advanced electronics for Rowers, including the SX, HC and SRT. Coxmate is based in Adelaide, Australia and is owned and operated by Peter Hodson. The main competition for Coxmate is Nielsen Kellerman, an American based brand who makes the Coxbox which has the majority of the market share.
When Creative Agency Secrets started working with the client, it had a limited online presence, which included a website with online store, and a strictly product based occasional news feed. There were no regular newsletter or blog posts or social networking presence.
Marketing execution – Coxmate Ambassadors
Coxmate Ambassadors is a programme which sees high level coxswains endorse the Coxmate brand by wearing Coxmate gear and using Coxmate equipment in training and at competitions.
This idea came about through conversations started using twitter with high level coxswains and has reached a point where two of the top female coxswains in the world (USA and UK) now use and endorse Coxmate.
We would like to extend this programme to a point where we have male and female coxswain ambassadors at an international, national, and regional level of competition.
Marketing execution – Event Trade Stands
Since we started working with the client, Coxmate has set up trade stands at 3 major events on the rowing calendar in Australia and New Zealand. At each of these events, we have run a special promotion on one of the Coxmate products (SX), in which any athlete competing at the event is able to borrow an SX unit for their race and when they return it, they will be given a print out of their race graph. We have found this to a very successful promotion, with several SX units being purchased after the trials and we have also seen a lot of interest in the race graphs, which themselves become content for the Coxmate blog/news page.
Outcomes
The content marketing strategy has worked well for this client. The Coxmate products have features that are the best on the market, but the brand was relatively unknown when we started work with them. By creating content on the Coxmate products, the brand and re-posting interesting content about the sport we have lifted the brands profile on the international stage.
This has also been an effective low cost way of competing with the client’s main competition, who appear to have an unlimited advertising budget. Content Marketing has allowed us to grow our clients’ email subscription list, fan base, and get two high profile athletes on board with product endorsement.
The work continues.
Related articles
- Tech PR: What Content Marketing Might Learn from the History of Email (crawfordpr.com)
- Content Marketing needs to become Target Content Marketing (leadsexplorer.com)
This is part 1 of a 2 part blog post, showing a case study for a sporting brand client. This case study highlights the importance and success of content marketing for smaller businesses.
Client: Coxmate
Industry: Rowing Equipment
Date: 2011 – January – ongoing
Summary: Content Marketing, Newsletter management, trade shows, athlete endorsement
Coxmate is a producer and supplier of advanced electronics for Rowers, including the SX, HC and SRT. Coxmate is based in Adelaide, Australia and is owned and operated by Peter Hodson. The main competition for Coxmate is Nielsen Kellerman, an American based brand who makes the Coxbox which has the majority of the market share.
When Creative Agency Secrets started working with the client, it had a limited online presence, which included a website with online store, and a strictly product based occasional news feed. There were no regular newsletter or blog posts or social networking presence.
Marketing execution – Content Marketing
Creative Agency Secrets (CAS) have been using a content based marketing strategy, to create a stronger online presence for Coxmate, which has evolved into an athlete endorsement programme called ‘Coxmate Ambassadors’. The aim of this content marketing strategy is to continue to raise awareness of the Coxmate brand and continue growing its fan base, as well as convincing rowers who use the competitors’ products to try Coxmate.
The content marketing plan has three sections:
Weekly Blog/News post:
Regular blog/news post remain a core part of the content marketing strategy. CAS used Google alerts to search keywords related to the business and competition to create unique content or to find content to re-publish. Ideas for content creation were also put forward by the client. The content is then posted on the clients blog/news feed; all relevant keywords are tagged and linked to other articles/ web pages. This helps Google to index the client’s website with more accuracy and the website will be more prominent in Google searches.
Monthly Newsletter:
The monthly newsletter is a way of reminding your current ‘fan base’ that you are still around and providing them with special deals/promotions to get them into the online store. The newsletter includes three articles which are a mixture of curated content, Coxmate news and a special deal on one of the Coxmate products. CAS created and managed the sending of the newsletter using Campaign Monitor, and currently sends it out to more than 1,000 subscribers worldwide.
Social Networking:
CAS created a Twitter and a Facebook account for the client, but quickly realized that the Facebook page was not as relevant as the Twitter account to the clients marketing needs. The Twitter account is set up to automatically tweet the latest news/blog post and has been a great marketing tool for starting conversations with potential buyers and the Ambassador Programme. The twitter account has also been an effective way to spread content via tweeting about curated content like a rowing website or an event, and we have built a strong group of over 100 followers who re-tweet our messages to reach an even wider audience.
Check back tomorrow for Part 2 of this case study, and learn how Creative Agency Secrets Content Marketing strategy lead onto athlete endorsement and trade stand success.
Related articles
- 5 Reasons Why You Should Be Social (webpagefx.com)
- 5 Strategies for Maximizing Your Content’s Social Reach (mashable.com)
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There was a once a time when global brands selected their marketing and advertising departments on their creative ability and trained them in the philosophy of business. The most successful staff members were the ones with the most unique ideas which would push their brand to success.
This last sentence is still true these days, with one exception, the internet has allowed for the most successful and unique ideas to come from anybody around the world. No longer must you work as a ‘staff member’ for a company or brand to have your creative ideas fulfilled, nowadays it’s as easy as entering an online competition or registering on a website.
Sharing brand ideas
Take video sharing specialist, Tongal, for example. This website gained global attention last year when it entered in a US based initiative programme where “emerging” companies were asked to submit entries detailing their unique tools and services. This programme secured over 400 entries, and one of the winners was Tongal, who are now participating in a project for Brisk Tea.
The irony of this is that Tongal, itself, is a competition based website which allows anyone around the globe to enter their skills in creative thinking, filming, pitching and testing products.
Do brands need creatives?
It would seem that to work in the marketing department for a global brand in this day and age, you don’t need a creative bone in your body; you just need to know how to run a competition and recognise a great idea when you see one.
PepsiCo, the food and beverage giant, recently launched a competition very similar to the one in the US which found Tongal. The project, called PepsiCo10, asks “emerging” companies to submit entries detailing their unique tools and services by mid-July 2011. The primary fields of interest include social networks, mobile marketing, location-based properties, digital video, gaming and “learning” platforms.
“PepsiCo10 will bring value to our business by ensuring that we are at the cutting edge of whatever digital and social media technology is out there,” Peter Charles, a PepsiCo marketing manager, said.
This movement to ‘hunt’ the globe for great creative ideas is gaining more and more popularity, and so it should. Essentially, everyone wins, the brand gets the creative ideas they want for a reasonable price (PepsiCo is offering £10,000 to the winner), the winners or top entries get recognition, make contacts and gain experience in how to pitch winning ideas and the public get to see the most cutting edge, unique and creative advertising and marketing campaigns from sources which otherwise, would probably have never surfaced.
Other brand contest sites
A leading agency in this ‘buy an idea’ movement is idea bounty, a website that that allows clients to ask the world for creative ideas in exchange for a reward, or Bounty. The clients review the submissions and select the best Idea as the Bounty winner. Clients can only use Ideas that they’ve paid a Bounty.
And what about Swagapalooza - turning it round this is new products pitching bloggers with large followings. A product in search of an audience…. creative? Innovative? Worthwhile?
What does the marketer of the future DO?
Are we heading towards a future where a marketing departments primary job will be to select winners of competitions for creative ideas? As bad as that sounds for all you marketers out there, I think the answer is probably even worse. Why even have a marketing department for that task when people can submit their entries online and have the public vote for the creative idea they want to see actioned the most.
Be warned – The End is Nigh!
11 Crowdsourcing websites:
- 99 Designs – graphic design
- IdeaStorm - ideas
- CrowdSpring – Graphic design
- CrowdWorks – more for corporates
- Brandstack – logos
- InnoCentive – problem solving for businesses
- Spudaroo – specialist for copy writing
- AdHack – advertising experts who’ll write your next ad for you
- Brainrack – a brainstorming site
- NamingForce – to name your product
- Clipik – video editing
Related articles
- Is spec work evil? (creativeagencysecrets.com)
- PepsiCo and Highland team up in hunt for ten new social media hits (telegraph.co.uk)
- 10 ways of crowdsourcing your needs or talent (the10most.com)
- Evil Genuis Finds Case Study in her Pepsi (inc.com)
- Mashable Teams With PepsiCo To Find Europe’s Most Promising Startups (mashable.com)
