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 

Marmite shortage "Marmageddon" by Global Culture

And so I think we’ve changed some of the ways we shop and how we socially engage while shopping and afterwards how we talk about our experiences.

Have you done these things in a shop:

• Photographed an item you like but aren’t ready to buy yet
• Compared prices in store with online websites
• Recorded price or size information on your phone rather than writing it longhand

I nearly got kicked out of a furniture store yesterday.

Wanna guess why?

He was caught red handed photographing some of the merchandise.  Not with malicious intent but with a view to comparing it to the space available in his house to fit it into.

The storm of commentary proves that this is not an isolated case.  I’ve done exactly the same thing – photographed price tags or descriptions in order to get dimensions or colours or to show it to friends before deciding to buy.

Retailers – When you review your mobile marketing strategy (see our posts here and here) think hard about how you can encourage your customers to buy and share the experience all the steps along the way through photography.

P.S. have you noticed how Pinterest is full of boards about things people want to buy in the future?

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.

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?

Creative Agency Secrets was asked to prove its salt by giving some free consulting to a new organisation, DirtyMan.co.nz Perversely, it is all about keeping men clean!

Avoiding costly product launches

The team is a start-up and was looking to gain profile without too much hard cost.  Our suggestions included:

• Painting up an old caravan to take to events
• Asking supermarkets about promotions based not in-store ($$$) but in the car park
• Setting up google alerts for three phrases aligned to the 3 personae of their ‘ideal customer’ profiles
• Set up a press or media page on the website to host high resolution pack images, past coverage and background information
• Print A5 leaflets on light card single sided and then use the back for several different purposes: a Postcard; letterbox maildrops; product information – just overprint in black when you need them

Prioritising your time and money

We time showing DirtyMan how to prioritise their decisions with regard to which promotions to spend money on and how to pick the ones that would give the best return.  They were considering a radio show sponsorship, leaflet drops to households and joint promotions with other non-competing brands.

For a startup, we think the best promotions are those that

1. Bring a customer face to face with the brand
2. Drive awareness to a new audience based on someone else’s data list

We recommended assessing any joint promotion based on the size and quality of the database of the other company.  And so a sports team sponsorship that has a supporting newsletter (especially an electronic one) and a Facebook fan group is probably worth more than a radio show with no mailing list.

What were the outcomes?

Here’s what Tracey Orange, the owner had to say after the briefing with Creative Agency Secrets:

Yes I did find my meeting with Rebecca useful, we have been busy talking to lots of people over the last week or so and I guess I am taking bits from everyone I speak to, and then formulating our plan from here.

After meeting Rebecca we are going to use some of her suggestions, one was to get out and meet our customers face to face and we now are looking for a cheap promo vehicle brand up and use for onsite promos and events, (if you know of any old land rovers for sale please let Mike know), she also gave me some good things to be talking to organisations we want to align with and not to be just giving stuff away but to leverage product for contacts database names and she also suggested getting hooked up with a clothing brand or similar and then the next day we spoke to someone who is going to see about hooking us up with a menswear clothing brand so fingers crossed.

Would you like access to our ideas?  Think about how to apply these to your own brand.

Get in touch and ask for a FREE 20 minute chat on the phone or Skype.

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”

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

Here are our top 5 tips

1. Write a blog

in advance to say that you’re going and what you’re looking for e.g. researching new suppliers or getting price quotes to buy new equipment

2. When you write this blog make the title H1 header something people will search for in google in future.  This makes it really good SEO for your brand.  ”Seeking new sports equipment for our retail enterprise” or “Looking for document management software applications” or “Researching new web design agencies”
3. When you physically visit or arrive at the event.  Find the hashtag#, tweet that you arrived and are free to meet anyone. Check in on other social apps if you use them.
4. While browsing the trade show and you are there in front of each stand, take 2 minutes to tweet that you’re with XYZ co looking at their product ABC at the #showhashtag.
5. Ask folks on the trade stands what their twitter id is so you can personally follow and mention them as well.

In this way you’ll get traction from anyone else at the show who sees you using the show hashtag, the brands themselves wil pick up on your mention, and probably the show organizers too.  Many will RT your work and show off your twitter ID in association with their own.  And hopefully your advance mention will bring in some messages from businesses who want to trade with you or supply to you or use your company to supply them as well.

Go forth and conquer trade show twitter promotion.

Check out our other blog posts about Profile Raising for new business development.

Image by antitezo via Flickr

Is it possible that a creative agency can build a pipeline of new business without having to respond to RFPs as a means of finding new leads?

Two articles in my RSS feed today struck me today as being relevant to this topic
The first is a slide deck from the excellent Courtney Pemberton and Tom Ross

Where the presenters contrast Schipul - a 37 person web development firm who do low-budget websites and lots of them; with Four Kitchens a 12 man operation whose average web development budget is $250,000.  Which firm would you rather do new business development for?  I know my response!

And the second is a USA Today expert opinion from Steve Strauss. He details the hideously comic-if-it-wasn’t-so-awful conference call with a web development team who fail to deliver even a basic understanding of their prospective client’s business.  I am sure it happened just as he recounts

•They internally scheduled the wrong time for the call (we are on the west coast, they were on the east coast).

•Once the call started, 15 minutes late, two of the folks on their end couldn’t find the website we had asked them to review with us on the call.

•The boss was not on the call at the start and they scrambled to find him.

Finally, 10 minutes into a call that was already starting 15 minutes late, the boss jumped on the line. He didn’t really know the purpose of the call, or who I was, or what we were doing, and so asked “So just what is it you do again?”

Are you disorganised in your new business process?

Making new business happen is one of the 7 steps in our new biz dev process.  Internal team management in advance of and during briefing calls is a ‘hygiene’ factor.  It is necessary as the underpinning to a solid new business pipeline.

The companies and people who seek our services are woefully unprepared for the relationship building, which starts at the first conversation.

Think back to your most recent meeting with a new prospect.  What do you ‘normally’ do at that event to start building a relationship?

John’s advice is “Listen to your partner.”

Back in the day, every marketing manager loved using an RFP or a competitive pitch as a way of gathering free ideas that they could implement themselves – sometimes without hiring the agency.  But it’s different now.
If you’re serious about winning new business through RFPs you, as the agency, must also learn to listen for the real briefing.

Hearing what the client is saying

John continues in the blog, writing

“They should be telling you roughly what it will take in manpower, time and resources to achieve your objective. They should be able to tell you a range of monthly expenses you will need to get there and what the process will look like”

What this means is you, the agency, knowing exactly what it will take to get the client to the marketing successes he craves – be honest.  Tell them the real cost – and do it before you ask about budgets.

Do you?

My check list for first meetings

1. I need to know how experienced a buyer the new prospect is – I want to know whether s/he really knows what marketing communications can do and can deliver or if it’s just a ‘catch-phrase’ with little real understanding behind.
2. How well does the client know what s’/he wants?  Can they articulate real business goals and what do they know about the different inbound marketing techniques that will achieve the goals?
3. Do they have a realistic idea about the time, effort and costs it will take to achieve those goals?

So, next time you go off for a first meeting – take a little check-list with you and evaluate your own performance!

Good luck