They realised that the landscape of personal data availability online has changed hugely in a very short time and despite hysterical outcries about Facebook privacy settings, it is an important area that both brands and consumers should be knowledgable about.

Their concept of “personal data stores” is a really interesting concept that is being built out – imagine you, the consumer, setting the ‘terms and conditions’ for a brand to access your personal information?

It’s called Vendor Relationship Management read more here and here.

But see their great Personal Data infographic published in full with a brief snapshot below showing the 2012 situation…it describes the landscape for legislation, technology, entrepreneurs, corporates and consumers and looks forward in scenarios for each to 2017.

Ctrl-Shift the Personal Data Landscape future

Ben Wightman

How did you end up working in an agency?

I come from a sales background selling TVs on the high street 14 years ago. I was prompted to make a move to the online side of retail off the back of increasing numbers of customers speaking at great length about the products but ending the conversation by saying they were going to go online and check the prices.This was frustrating for any salesman.

I learnt about SEO, paid search and managing websites, affiliate marketing and then after a few years I decided to specialize in paid search.

What has changed for the high street retailer in the context of PPC?

Mobile is going to be a revolution for the high street retailer. There always seemed to be a division between the online and offline worlds. Many felt the internet was a threat to the high street then but more recently the growth of mobile and smartphones for mobile web access has changed.

In my opinion – this is the glue that will bring together the online and offline worlds.

Mobile is the medium that connects web users with the physical world. Mobile has a great synergy with above the line magazine or TV advertising.

What are your main findings in the Mobile Internet Report?

We have a home improvements client running TV campaign and we noted during the evening hours (8-10pm) when these run up to 39% of web traffic is from smartphones and there are significant increases in mobile traffic during these hours.

Before, the normal rates were 13-14% for that advertiser.

One study by Tesco found that 50% of all smartphone users used it for web browsing while watching TV.  So we quickly worked to tie this in with a mobile optimized paid search campaign to pick up the interest driven from the TV adverts.

How do you serve mobile ads?

We created a Google Adwords campaign tailored specifically to serve adverts to mobile users – in the ad settings set to serve out to mobile and smartphone devices and desktop.

Add to that writing advert text that speaks to mobile users. Anyone working in mobile search has to appreciate the subtleties of behaviours between mobile versus tablet and desktop users.

What is a customer trying to do while using these devices? e.g. mobile web use peaks during commuting hours and after the evening meal (watching TV or social time) but desktops peak earlier during the day during working hours and in the evening.

But the trends for mobile are very different. Using a smartphone for searches in a lunch hour means the likelihood is they are looking for quick easy information – not wanting massive detailed content. So mobile ad texts and landing pages should be configured to service that requirement,.

Do you do PPC for your own work at Latitude?

Yes – we do have a small one.  Is it effective? As far as I’m aware yes – it only has a small keyword inventory.

[We are interested in #FutureAgency - do agencies practice what they preach to clients].

How do you do new business development for Latitude?

I act as a voice of authority in paid search for new business.

Our agency set up is quite differently from others. We have a dedicated client services team who do the day to day contact with clients and our production team focuses on making the magic happen by building and managing the search campaigns. We work in different pods but close together.  Attending a pitch we’ll typically have a client services leader accompanied by a representative from each of the relevant production teams.

Are many Brands moving into paid search for the first time?

No most of our brands have a long established history with paid search – most come with an existing account and we optimize that. Many are moving from in house to outsourced experts. occasionally they move from another agency.

How can readers get the report and get on your mailing list?

When they are published we send the new report to clients first and  on our Latitude Group site.

Get the Latitude Mobile Report for 2012 

easy.  Today we showcase a client and their challenges and a book and a blog post.  Together they give you the one principle you need to write a B2B online brand strategy.

How to get customer community integrated into your marketing

Three things we read and discussed coincided this week:

1. Planning with the Silver Fern Farms marketing team
2. Reading The B2B Social Media Book
3. Commenting on Confused of Calcutta’s blog post – Musings about communities and prices

Start with the blog post - there are three main points: Everyone in the community is a customer; Communities expect a range of prices for each product or service; A connected community converges to act as a single, composite customer.  

Take the range of prices – some customers are happy to read free offerings; others will contribute to comments or test purchase items while others are avid fans.  The Silver Fern Farms team were discussing how to organise messaging across different geographical marketplaces – not all their range is sold in each country. [They sell lamb and venison in supermarkets.]

Treating all the customers and prospects as a single, composite customer enables us to deliver into separate marketplaces with variable messaging.  Yes, we do not use the same message to each group.  BUT we know the customer is smart and can read.  Being clear about what products are available in which supermarkets matters.  It builds awareness of the wider product range and helps customers appreciate the global nature of the Silver Fern Farms business.

Is B2B any different for online?

Slant these ideas into the business to business B2B world. This is where I find clients have the greatest problems “coping” with a singular community.  And ironically, this is where the greatest opportunities exist for B2B.

Read this quote from the Book

Most B2B companies live with fear. The fear of giving away too much information, saying something wrong, giving competitors an advantage.

But I know B2B companies have another fear. Integrated messaging.

This is perceived as hard to do.  Mainly because of the territoriality of the agencies and staff who service the brand.

Each market, each customer, each group of buyers fits into a hierarchy of customer-types. From the inquirer who wants to read for free but not participate up through to the possible purchaser.  Your brand needs to set up its marketing to allow and

enable each customer type to engage at the participation level the customer chooses.

I wrote that in bold because this principle is the key to your strategic marketing plan.

How does engagement work in practice?

Set up a range of marketing activities that allow any customer from the vast pool of possibles to enable customers to get what they need.

Think of it as a staircase, each step has an increasing level of engagement and possibly a higher price.

When planning your online messaging think of your brand’s online presence as if it were a niche magazine.  You should aim to be the best ‘trade journal’ magazine you possibly can be.  Dominate your niche and the customer will figure out which of your offerings (from free to paid) she wants and where/how to acquire for herself.

And so we hoped to find a strong follow up to that story and were delighted that Lance Wiggs wrote up a talk John Brackenridge did to the BBD CEO Summit.  We were hoping to find out exactly what John hired….

There is a bit of ‘history’ in the industry as Mckinsey was hired to advise on the structure of the growers versus the marketers in 1999 and recommended splitting the marketing and promotion function off into a ‘commercial entity’.

And we thought now was a good time to show off our original 2010 pitch.  What’s interesting is that little has changed.    We’d still recommend most of the same activity.

Download it here NZ Merino Proposal

Or review the slides.

How would you address this tricky database marketing challenge?

A B2B marketer relies heavily on postal mail to promote their offerings. They use email marketing but have yet to see results strong enough to justify a reduced reliance on the Postal Service. Each purchase secured via postal mail averages $1,500; average lifetime customer value exceeds $6,000. The call-to-action is “buy now” (not lead generation), so response rates are fairly low. In fact, one purchase per thousand pieces mailed is an acceptable response rate. Customers and prospects in the marketing database receive no more than 20 mailings a year. Offerings are highly specialized, so the mail quantity for most offerings is relatively small. The marketer has not studied how different segments of the marketing database have performed over time. They know a significant percentage of the database is waste, but with a minimum of a .001 required response rate (a rate they often achieve), and insufficient frequency to study how recipients behave after many mailings, they’re reluctant to delete many records. (i.e., They’re concerned about deleting a non-responsive record after the 20th mailing that could produce a response on, say, the 21st mailing.)

Have a solution or know anyone who may?

Here’s our response:

I may be wrong but it sounds like marketing and sales don’t work together here – in fact there may not be any ‘sales’ folks in the business. I would also suggest having a discussion with sales to see if they’d consider moving to a lead generation model rather than direct response as that will almost certainly improve the metrics. Get Brian Carroll in to give an overview??

A bit of telephone customer research about historic purchase decisions that got insight into why they bought and when they bought may aide creating database segments and also migrating some people onto email; off the postal mailing altogether and improve the metrics of this offering in the long term.

Here’s some ideas of ways to get over this barrier by appealing to your existing customerbase.  They know you, they know your brand and they also know their local area:

1. The English Cut – bespoke Savile Row suits – adding a ready to wear range

English Cut Savile Row suits

I have been on Tom Mahon’s email list for years – not because I buy from him (he only clothes men) but because of his promotional methods using social media and email marketing.  In the message I got today he links to a video in which he asks his readers for two things: Recommendations of stores local to their home who might stock his ready to wear range and secondly, introductions to Tailors who might want to make the suits.

The one mistake he made was not specifying ONE SINGLE PLACE for the replies – it came from a noreply email address and the video is both on his site and youtube – so he’ll have to collate answers from a range of sources.  I would have chosen to set up an unique email address for replies and mentioned it in the video – printed it on screen.

2. Global Culture wants to expand its retail stockists

The other is an iconic kiwi t-shirt brand who is keen to get new outlets in three cities in New Zealand.  Using a trade magazine, we helped them write a short article about the company and its recent growth which included the appeal for new locations.

Global Culture has its target audience in towns where there is a mix of both tourist visitors and locals and so is well-represented in New Zealand towns like Queenstown and Christchurch.  It is trying to get introductions to retailers in Gisborne, Napier, Wellington, Tauranga and around the Hawkes Bay region who might be willing to stock their range.

Idealog is the business magazine and website that features innovative businesses and new products or services and so getting the article about Global Culture published there and also included in their daily email news roundup to a recipient list of 5,000 business people was a good start to opening dialogues.

Any of you know of businesses who’ve succeeded in getting expansion plans promoted by customers?

Brian Carroll wrote a super blog post about this subject and came out with solid suggestions about how to get executive support for your proposal or project.

Working with larger organisations means that budgetary control is not always within the grasp of the person wo you’re speaking with.

Brian made these suggestions:

1. Identify executive priorities [align your pitch to their priorities]
2. Analyse your sales organisation [how much time do they spend prospecting vs closing]
3. Show what others have done [sell using case studies]
4. Huddle with your sales team [check you're on the same page on what works/doesn't work]
5. Develop a pilot

All great advice – read the full article here for the detail and the links Brian suggests.

But how to up-sell your proposal to the Marketing Director?

Last month we had three situations where Creative Agency Secrets was approached by a member of staff who didn’t have sufficient authority to buy our services – but they wanted to work with us.

Take a read of these three mini-case studies on how to upsell your proposal to your contact’s boss.

1. We wrote to the CEO stating the issue and a solution – he forwarded it to the young man who’d originally approached us with a note to investigate our ‘offer’…. Nice way to let the CEO think he had the idea first.
2. We took a detailed brief from the junior and agreed not to write a proposal, but to email him a critique of the company website and sales process – he then took that to the CEO for discussion with a view to getting a con call for us with the CEO.
3. We analysed the issue; suggested a small pilot.   This fitted the budget for which the executive already had sign-off but was below our normal charge out rate.  We worked to adapt the campaign to work on a parallel platform and to an audience we controlled [our blog newsletter list] thus giving the exec a case study pilot with measurable results which he could use to prove the case to his bosses.  This also enabled us to demonstrate our skill and set up the campaign to deliver the ROI needed.

Related articles

• Find New Customers Helps Businesses Keep SCORE to Improve Demand Generation(fearlesscompetitor.com)

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• Aha! Marketing Leaders Reveal Their Most Powerful Marketing Insights from 2011 (customerthink.com)

A neat way of promoting the whole skill base of your agency to interested parties.

20/20 Public Relations Team twitter group

And then having noticed one, we also saw this at the Optimizer HQ

Optimizer HQ twitter group for the team

How to create groups in Twitter

These articles cover off several businesses who offer this service:

• Mashable - How to Create Groups for Twitter
• Twitter Help – How to Use Twitter Lists
• Mashable – 30+ more ways to create groups on Twitter
• Josh Bartlett – How to cut the noise and create groups for friends [more about filtering than group lists]

Read more posts about Step 2 in our Business Development process “2- Marketing communication”

If we all agree that people need to be safe before they make a purchase decision and we agree that most purchase decisions are made emotionally, then it is safe to say compelling stories go a long way in accelerating the sale.

How? Let me illustrate four ways stories contribute to strong sales and marketing strategy.

1. Stories are much easier to understand, remember and share than complex details. Features and benefits cause our brains to work hard and ultimately like all our organs, brains that work hard need to rest. Stories, on the other hand, are processed by a different part of our brain. That’s why good ones are so easy to remember.

2. People actually like sharing stories. Good, bad or ugly, they like having information that they think other people will find valuable. That’s why bad experiences are shared 10 times more than good experiences. We are trying to prove our value by helping others stay away from bad experiences.

3. Social media accelerates story sharing. In the old days (three years ago) people told stories to other people. Today, people post stories, they blog about their experiences, they convert stories into reviews and those stories are carried across the web and out through a variety of social media.

4. Stories are told in a variety of mediums. There are three different learning styles, visual (learn by seeing and looking), auditory (learn by hearing and listening), and kinesthetic (touching and doing). Research shows that 60% of the population are visual learners. This means stories need to be visual and written. So when you create your stories, keep YouTube in mind.

To learn how to get stories into your marketing, download this Free Report – 9 Steps to Creating a Content Marketing Strategy for Your Business.

Here is something you can do today to get stories into your business.

B2B Marketing Pinterest boards

There’s been a profusion of interest in the new(ish) social media site, Pinterest – see my boards .

One of the advantages of Pinterest – compared to Facebook you can’t create a page where people find your interest easily, unless you’re already connected to each other.  On Pinterest you can search for Tennis shoes, or Apple accessories or B2B marketing. You see, it’s so much more powerful for search and discovery.

Pinterest uses the Youtube algorithm for popularity  and so if your pins get relayed/repinned quickly and you get some momentum the popularity of your boards move up fast.

7 things to do today on Pinterest

Here are our suggestions on things you can do to earn revenues, SEO backlinks and more from using the service for your business.

1. Pin things from your own blog – get people reading what you write
2. pin a book on Amazon using your affiliate link – copy the link and paste it into the Pinterest add button… it pulls the picture and makes it part of your page… if it gets re-pinned by anyone else, your affiliate button goes with it!
3. Drive SEO from Pinterest by naming your board creatively – your board name becomes the title of that page (see this one we created on Creative Agency Infographics).  When you create a board the first word of the board name becomes the meta description… So don’t use “Things I like” it gets you nowhere.
4. Use key words for your business or service when describing your pictures AND your boards….like this one for Rowing Gifts for Rowers
5. Don’t forget, it’s also a social site – the more comments and likes you get the higher they show up in search.
6. Write headlines using key words and in a manner that drives traffic ‘I can’t believe this hasn’t got sugar in it…‘ people click to see what it does have in it!
7. Use it for the niche research… find which boards have likes and repins – if you find a board which has both then it may a good product – maybe you should feature it or use for your own site.

Getting legal with brands

Yo need to know that there is a clause in the Terms of use that says no commercial use…But plenty of people are advocating using it for marketing and so Pinterest may have to change TOU.  Let’s face it, the worst thing they’ll do is shut down your board.

Downsides of Pinterest

You have to have more than one Faceboook account to get more than one Pinterest account….so go create!

You’re interested in becoming smarter and more knowledgable about new business development.  You want to win more customers and clients for your business and build an online presence for your organisation or brand…

Join our Weekly Newsletter Group and find out why an investment of 20 minutes a week will improve your business development