Social Engagement Archives : Page 2 of 3 : Persona Design

Socially Empowered Employees: Are They Key to Building Your Brand Online?

May 29, 2013/0 Comments/in Brand Champions, Brand Experience, Brand Reputation, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, Branding, Business, Customer Engagement, Facebook, Google+, Integrated Marketing, Linkedin, Online Marketing, Pinterest, Social Engagement, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube /by Lorraine Carter

The demand for Community Managers has steadily increased over the last five years and, with the rise in social media as a business driver, it’s not hard to see why. As brands began waking up to the power of collaborating with online social communities, the role of the community manager was seen as the strategic backbone to a social business.

Community Managers not only manage the online voice of the brand through social networks, they are equally responsible for being the voice of the community to the brand. Their role combines building brand awareness, adoption and customer relationships through online conversations, with careful collection and analysis of customer feedback and online habits.

Some companies have been employing community managers for years, others are exploring it for the first time, but a trend is emerging that might make the current role of community managers slightly less significant.

Socially Empowered Employees

Big brands have become more noticeably proactive over the last twelve months in encouraging their employees to be active on their own personal social networks for the benefit of the brand (they are employed by). The theory behind the strategy is that every employee can become an ambassador for the brand. If you are asking why you would allow or encourage your employees to openly represent your brand, read on…

Top 5 Reasons for Leveraging Your Brand Through Your Employees Online

1. More Eyes, Ears & Hands

Online content that gains attention and drives traffic is hard to create. In many cases the best content just has to be done in the right moment. Look at what Oreo achieved by tweeting their Superbowl message at the just right time. Having one community manager limits the time and potential reach of your brand. There is not always time to seek approval or listen to the concerns and feedback if the responsibility is left to just one person and an opportunity can pass by within minutes. Empowered employees can not only represent the brand online, they can connect with customers at the right time and collectively build online communities that drive meaningful brand equity.

2. Humanize Your Online Brand

One of the most integral parts of social business are the employees in the company itself. In an offline world, employees often humanize the brand experience. They make the customers feel like they are doing business with someone they can relate to, and not just a company that wants their money. Having multiple online representatives extends the brand personality online and gives social business an authentic voice.

3. Trust Is The Real Social Currency

Trust is one of the hardest attributes to come by in the business world. Building strong relationships has become almost more important than transactional communication. If trust is the social currency of the social media age then building strong relationships between employees and the marketplace at large can make a real impact on sustainable sales. Employees who are empowered to represent the brand online can be valuable effective participants in building trust and enhancing brand image.

4. Your Online Brand Deserves A Real Voice

Authenticity and transparency are key to building a strong online representation of any brand. Using automated social media engagement tools instead of actually conversing with customers online can kill the value of social business and negatively effect offline sales. The benefits of socially empowered employees to represent the brand and act as brand advocates can’t be underestimated.

5. Your Employees Are A Reflection Of Your Company, Your Brand

If you are afraid of what your employees would say about you online then you need to question if the real problem lies not with the employees but with the company itself. Are there internal issues that would reflect badly on the brand? Have you a poor corporate culture? Are you hiring the wrong people? In that case the problem then is not what the employees might say, but what the company does.

Community Managers will still have a role to play in a future of socially empowered employees. Their guidance is needed to direct, measure and strategize how the general workforce is and should be using social media to reach the customer.

In order to achieve a tangible business objective, socially empowered employees need to be trained and motivated to represent the best interest of your brand online.

When this is achieved, employees who are trusted with the responsibility of your brand’s online reputation can create greater online content that inspires, that informs and that ultimately adds value to the conversation and consequently your brand. Mobilizing rather than muffling your employee’s online activity might be the key to growing your business in the year ahead.

• Have you considered how you could adapt and leverage your employees social reach for your brand online, within your social business or online marketing strategy?

• Do you need to audit your company’s social media policy and train your staff, with clear guidelines, in how best to represent your brand online?

Guerrilla Marketing : Targeting One to Reach Many With Your Brand

April 2, 2013/0 Comments/in Ambush Marketing, Brand Personality, Brand Story, Brand Strategy, Branding, Customer Engagement, Customer Service, Guerrilla Marketing, Integrated Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Engagement, Social Media, Target Market /by Lorraine Carter

The concept of brands employing creative, innovative, and sometimes controversial tactics to generate buzz and demand attention is not a new one. However guerrilla marketing goes a step further.

By its very nature guerrilla marketing is about using unexpected tactics to generate maximum impact with as wide an audience as possible. Its success lies in creating a unique, engaging and thought provoking idea that connects with the target market and develops meaningful brand equity. Needless to say your guerrilla branding strategy needs to be totally congruent with your brand personality and what your brand stands for!

With guerrilla marketing it was often a case of the simple being the most effective. Despite a huge marketing spend at their disposal, Red Bull gained substantial exposure by choosing to adopt guerrilla tactic for their F1 London campaign; exploiting the impact of placing the extraordinary within the ordinary.

So too did McDonalds China with their McNuggets campaign.

Historically guerrilla marketing was typically viewed as a publicity stunt, with brands looking for maximum impact for minimal spend. The potential exposure and reach generated from online viral campaigns now however, has resulted in a new breed of guerrilla tactics being used by leading brands.

With greater understanding of digital metrics, brands are starting to accept the real impact that a virally successful guerrilla campaign can play on brand development. Viral success amounts to far more than greater brand awareness. The right campaign can tell a story and introduce the audience to an element of the brand personality sometimes lost in traditional advertising.

KLM are a brand who have a history of creating engaging guerrilla marketing campaigns.

With a strong social media presence in place, the brand has recently engaged in social heavy guerrilla campaigns that utilize social media data to executed targeted guerrilla campaigns to maximum effect.

KLM are the poster brand for social business. Their interaction with fans on twitter is a testament to how to develop brand image and build relationships using social media. Their willingness to engage with their fans has resulted in some incredible activities.

A recent guerrilla campaign by KLM took social involvement with fans to a new level. Over the Christmas period, KLM looked for passengers who checked into their flights on Foursquare and tweeted about waiting to board, did a little social media research to find out more about them, and then surprised them at their gates with personalized gifts. The campaign was filmed by KLM and soon went viral. It helped communicate the brands commitment to customer service, build positive brand associations, and spread brand awareness as well as a little holiday spirit.

In contrast, stress was the desired emotion of Nivea’s latest guerrilla efforts. While not as personally invasive as KLM’s airport gift campaign, Nivea too preyed on individuals to maximize viral attention. Using a variety of mediums the brand sought to play on customer stress and fear to create a context for their latest deodorant product. While KLM’s stunt was about developing brand equity through positive brand connotations, Nivea’s campaign was an obvious product push.

What both campaigns highlight is the impact that personalized guerrilla campaigns can have on the wider audience. While traditional guerrilla tactics get attention, it is not necessarily from the right target audience. By targeting individuals, the brands manage to involve all their target customers through social media sharing the experience of the campaign victims; smiling with KLM, squirming with Nivea! The use of actual customers draws the audience to identify with the people, the situation and evokes a genuine emotional response.

While some campaigns can be complex and costly to execute, the real success of modern guerrilla marketing, is to create great content, in the right context that sparks conversation and genuine emotional engagement.

Here’s the question, what kind of creative guerrilla marketing campaign, targeted at individuals but grabbing mass audience attention, could you leverage to increase genuine brand affinity with your target customers?

Have you even considered guerrilla marketing as part of your brand strategy?

Employee’s Online Reach: Are You Leveraging Yours To Grow Your Brand?

March 20, 2013/0 Comments/in Blogging, Brand Risk Management, Brand Risk Mitigation, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, Business, Communication, Customer Engagement, Facebook, Google+, Integrated Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Linkedin, Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Engagement, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube /by Lorraine Carter

Twitter followers, LinkedIn profiles, Personal Blogs. Employees are now spending time developing and nurturing personal and professional brands of their own. From communicating about personal interests, or professional expertise, employees are quickly establishing themselves as knowledgeable voices in the online space.

Whether encouraging the employee to promote the brand through their personal profiles, or developing a co-branded approach where the employee is promoted as representing the brand, having an employee with a significant online following can offer leverage to a brand looking to further its reach in the market.

Top 5 Reasons for Leveraging Your Employee’s Online Reach to Grow Your Brand

Does your Sales manager have more LinkedIn connections than your company profile? Does your Marketing Manager have more Twitter followers than your brand? Employees that have developed a strong public identity can offer numerous benefits to a brand if that reach is harnessed to promote the brand and its values.

1. Reach

An employee that has amassed a large online following instantly opens up the possibility of widening the audience reach of the brand online. They have established themselves as an influencer and if they use this power to promote the brand it can impact on brand awareness and image.

2. Influence

An employee that establishes themselves as an online expert in their field can give credence to a brand by tweeting as a representative of that brand. It influences customer perception of the brand, positioning it as leader in the market, and can generate new leads for the business through online conversations.

3. Brand image

Employees can make the best brand champions. If they love what they do, and they love what the brand represents, they are often eager to share their enthusiasm with the world. Employees who vocalize their love for the brand on their social media channels give the brand message a powerful and authentic voice.

4. Relationship Building

Many brands use social media as a tool to build relationships with their customers. Co-branded twitter handles like @ikeasupport_claire help develop a real human connection between the brand and their customers. This touch point connection can be critical in developing a meaningful and lasting relationship with customers.

5. Recruitment

Co-branded employees who use their personal profiles to promote their company can help attract high caliber like-minded people to the company and increase your valuable talent pool.

Top 5 The Risks To Your Business and Your Brand

Employee’s online activity can be a complement to a company’s own brand image. But there are implications of giving employees license to represent the brand in their personal or co-branded profiles.

1. Clash of Values

For every positive tweet sent by an employee about your brand, there are likely to be several other messages that represent the values of the employee. It is not up to your customer to distinguish which message reflects the brand values and which are solely belonging to the employee. Harnessing employee’s online reach for the benefit of brand must first ensure that the values of the brand and employee are closely aligned.

2. Miscommunication

There is a danger that an employee who feels they are representing the brand communicates sensitive internal information that should not be for public viewing. You need to ensure you have very clear company policy with regard to your social media guidelines and a brand risk management strategy in place.

3. Time and Productivity

Updating social media is a time consuming process. Employees who feel that they are doing the brand a service by promoting work using their personal profiles might also feel entitled to update profiles during work hours, reducing valuable productivity.

4. Internal Resentment

There is a risk that resentment between employees can fester regarding social media use at work. How to you distinguish between the employees that are allowed to update personal profiles during work hours because it benefits the brand, and those who cannot because the value of doing so is not as significant to the brand?

5. Intellectual Property Rights

Possibly the biggest consideration of leveraging co-branded employee profiles is the argument over who holds the ownership rights to the profiles and their followers.

A sales Rep who works for a company for five years may amass a huge number of connections on LinkedIn; connections which are essentially a form of customer lists for the company. If that employee leaves the company who has rights to that profile’s list of contacts?

Noah Kravitz left his former employer PhoneDog in October 2010 on good terms. The company then sued him for $340,000 for the 17,000 followers he kept after he left the position, valuing each follower at $2.50 per month over a period of eight months.

Kravitz told the New York Times that PhoneDog told him he could keep his followers, as long as he continued to Tweet about the company.

A judge in the USA dismissed a lawsuit by a former employee of Edcomm who claimed that the company illegally accessed her LinkedIn account after she left the company; changing her password and preventing her from accessing critical contacts. Even though the account was created under the employee’s own name, the judge’s ruling gives leverage to the argument that social media content created at work belongs to employers.

Although these rulings give some power to companies in relation to intellectual property rights, the matter is still very much in the grey.

Companies need to have very specific social media policies relating to the social media activity of employees in the workplace.

Depending on corporate culture and risk tolerance of your company, you might want to embrace the business benefits of co-branded employees.

Opting for tight limits on work related social media might be the better bet when it comes to controlling your brand and managing risk.

• Does your company have a well developed policy regarding who owns what online?

• How do you distinguish between a personal online activity and one that represents the brand?

• Does your corporate culture support co-branded employees communication?

6 Top Customer Trends in 2013 and How To Leverage Them Effectively

January 22, 2013/0 Comments/in Brand Reputation, Brand Risk Management, Brand Risk Mitigation, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Branding, Business, Communication, Customer Engagement, Cyber Threat, Facebook, Integrated Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Linkedin, Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Engagement, Social Media, Twitter /by Lorraine Carter

With so many emerging marketing trends impacting 2013 the opportunities are plentiful for brands to really make meaningful connections with their customers.

Never before have we had such easy access to copious amounts of data about our customer’s online behaviour. This gives brands invaluable insights from which leverage their brand strategy and capture market share together with increased profitability.

Equally, now is the time to identify challenges, which if left ignored, may leave your brand lagging behind its competitors, not to mention lost revenue. Seize your opportunities and be proactive in the year ahead!

1. Social Media Accountability

Social Media has been getting a bit of a knocking at the moment and seems to be making a regular appearance in mainstream news due to the increased prevalence of cyber bullying. This in turn has made online accountability and a heightened awareness of transparency in both engagement strategy, and quality content creation, a bigger issue for brands in the year ahead.

The need for proper social media training with clearly defined policy and procedures has never been more critical for brand custodians. Online risk management needs to be a top priority in 2013 for all brand owners.

2. Customer Power

The rise in crowd-sourcing and the increasing might of social media means that the balance of power is continuing to tip towards the customer. Brands need to really understand the difference between owned content and earned content. Brand engagement on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter is largely earned content through engagement with your customers.

The key for brands in the coming months is to leverage the collective voice of their customers and turn content and interactions into marketing opportunities. Don’t shy away from your customers voices, listen to them, value their needs and let this be the year your customer gets heard and becomes central to your brand strategy.

3. Brand Experience

Continuing the trend of recent years, 2013 will continue to be about building a truly meaningful brand experience for your customers.

Build a narrative around your brand and create content that reinforces your brand story and what it stands for. Emotive content has the greatest impact in the market. Structure your branding content so that each touch-point forms a memorable brand experience that engages your customer.

Focusing on your customers’ needs and creating a seamless customer experience between online and offline branding can significantly impact your bottom line. Develop a focused content plan with clear objectives tailored to your core target audience, make it more about them this year – be truly customer centric.

4. Brand Adaptability

Mobile device usage and m-commerce domination are set to make significant leaps in the year ahead. They will become a customer expectation rather than addition to the brand experience. Be the brand that drives change and adapt your brand strategy to embrace these changes. Don’t run the risk of struggling behind your competitors in 2014.

5. Data Convergence

The buzz words of digital marketing in 2013. With so many digital channels with which to reach your customers the need to analyze, interpret and translate the data into meaningful insights and actions has never been stronger.

The move on the web into predominately mobile and social media means that multi-channel reporting should be adopted so that your brand can identify the effectiveness of your multichannel mix. Use the data to determine the real contributors from each channel; refine your segmentation and get more specific with your targeting.

6. Relevance

At the end of the day we are not trying to reinvent the wheel. The core values of your brand should still provide the direction and remain the driving force behind your business. Digital demands attention but it must stay true to the core essence of your brand. It’s a tool that enhances the marketing mix and expands connection opportunities.

The strongest brand experiences are those that are created when the brand is relevant to the customer in every context. To really benefit your customer you need to align your offline and online marketing campaigns.

Harness their synergy by creating a seamless brand engagement for your customer through all your touchpoints. Stop dividing your strategy into online and offline and start offering a fully integrated brand experience.

The returns will be evident with increased brand awareness, enhanced brand equity, more solid brand longevity and increased profitability.

How are you going to change, adapt or fully integrate your brand strategy to harness these trends to increase your revenue and grow your market share?

Business Blogs: Why Your Business Needs One, How to Start & What to Post

January 8, 2013/0 Comments/in Award Winners, Award Winning, Blogging, Branding, Business, Online Marketing, Publishing, Social Engagement /by Lorraine Carter

Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur, new in business, SME or much larger organization, adding a blog or news section to your website or online presence is a great way of serving your primary audience. It’s also a key strategy for lead generation, growing your brand recognition and potentially your reputation, by becoming the go-to-front-of-mind expert resource in your target market.

While blogs have been around since the late 1990s they’ve gained increased importance for business today. When done well, blogs are very cost effective marketing tools for driving lead generation and sales. I’d even go as far as saying they’re now critical to businesses. Customers are so overwhelmed by content 24/7 that if your blog can become a curator source of really useful high quality content you’ll be sought out as the preferred resource and solution provider, the No.1 brand in your target market.

Blogs: A Key Part of Your Social Media Presence

If you’re new to social media and find it all a bit over whelming or intimidating then blogging is a great way of launching yourself online through short quality articles compared to engaging immediately in live dialogue on other platforms such as Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.

Social media is such a ubiquitous part of our business world and blogs are a key part of that maturing social media ecosystem. They provide an ‘owned’ social media outlet through content, allowed social sharing, guest writers and a forum for conversation via comments etc.

In fact if you’re in business and a ‘leader’, or aspiring leader, you have to have an ‘engaging’ online presence of some sort and a well managed blog is an essential platform to get your brand name and voice heard.

Attract New Customers and Be The Go-To-Expert for Repeat Business

Undeniably writing a good business to business blog does require a certain level of commitment but with a little time and effort can pay huge dividends in the long run. Don’t be put off by the idea of writing either. You don’t need to have amazing writing skills. In fact clear, simple, jargon free language is often better. Writing is like any other skill, with a little practice you get a lot better so don’t hold back, dive in, share your gifts, your expertise with the world! There are customers out there who will really thank you for solving their problems, refer you, and come back to you time and time again.

Online Search Optimisation for Your Brand

Another very important reason for writing a good blog is that it supports search optimisation. Blogs provide keyword rich content that answers customers questions which are consequently much more Google friendly i.e. you’re more likely to be found online.

Blogging Goals

The key is to start out with a well defined goal. What are you trying to accomplish? Are you aiming to become recognised as an expert in a specialist area? Are you going to offer tips and insights to help your customers solve common problems? At a minimum start with at least one objective you want to achieve. You can’t hit your target if you don’t have a defined goal in mind and those goals should be aligned to your business objectives. The more specific and measurable your goal the better, also a clear goal will help keep you on track when planning and writing your content.

Consistently Compelling Content

What are you going to writing about? This is the question that frequently brings clients to a screeching halt. However it’s a lot easier then you think when you start breaking down your expertise into 12 core topics. What can you feature that’s really useful, interesting and insightful to your customers and congruent with your core brand message? When you start looking at it in those terms is suddenly becomes simpler. Once you’ve picked your 12 master topics then sub-divide each of them into 4 additional separate detailed articles under that overriding topic.

For example I write brand related content so in a given year I could decided to feature a topic on Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Name Origination, Brand Audits, Brand Packaging, Brand Risk Management, Brand Revitalisation, Social Media & Branding, Brand Strategy, Brand Web Design, Online Marketing, Mastermind Branding Programmes, Brand Identity Design etc. Incidentally you can click on any one of the relevant categories in the right hand column of this blog to find all the articles posted on your topic of potential interest.

I could then sub-divide each of those topics into four different articles and suddenly my year is planned with one blog topic a week! The secret is advance planning and you’ll never have writers block! It’s also a good idea to have 2-3 evergreen articles written ahead of time so when you’re under pressure in a particularly busy week you always have one to hand.

Keep your content fresh, knowledgeable, informative, compelling and engaging. It’s also far better to write authentically in your own voice or personality, congruent with your core brand message, so your audience gets to know you and your brand (product or service). It’s also a lot more powerful and easier then trying to sustain an artificial facade that’s not your own.

• Have you included a blog as part of your brand marketing strategy?

• Could you use it as one of your key drivers for lead generation?

• Could you engage additionally with to your existing customers through your blog by giving them added value to support their needs?

*This is part of an article written by Lorraine Carter, listed as one of the Top 1,000 Women of Influence in Ireland, and published in Irish Tatler Business Annual 2013.

Has Your Brand Leveraged Mobile Marketing and mCommerce Yet?

November 30, 2012/0 Comments/in Brand Strategy, eCommerce, EProducts, Integrated Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Mobile, Mobile Commerce, Online Marketing, Smart Phones, Social Engagement, Social Media /by Lorraine Carter

Four out of every five smart phone users in the US accessed retail content on their device in July 2012, with the retail giant Amazon receiving 49.6 million visitors via mobile devices alone.

Among all interactive marketing platforms, mobile marketing is expected to grow 38% over the next five years with an estimated $8.2 billion being funneled into it by the year 2016. This rapid shift in consumer behaviour is too significant for brands to ignore and survival depends on the ability to adapt to this very dynamic retailing environment.

As Smart phone apps, social media, mCommerce, digital wallets and mobile enabled websites become much more mainstream, there is a rapid need for new thinking and entirely new marketing strategies to capture and leverage this growing and extremely lucrative market.

Brands who best understand consumer behaviour as they engage in mobile interaction will be in the best position to capitalize on the shift in market dynamics. Critically, brands that are early movers and embrace mobile marketing are much more likely to boost bottom line profitability and lead with greatest market share.

Connecting with your Customers 24/7

Adapting to mobile marketing is not as easy as it might seem. The multiple different ways you can communicate with your target audience is vast and growing everyday as new social platforms and apps are launched to market every week.

However the ability to connect in a meaningful way has become increasingly sophisticated and challenging for brands. Customers have a bewildering array of choice. Now its about how you cut through that barrage to attract their attention, give them something they want on their terms and continue to build your brand relationship and meet their needs that is a critical part of the brand strategy mix.

Customers are now connected 24/7, if they choose, through hand held devices such as tablets, mobile devices and particularly smart phones. Shopping, banking, entertainment are just a click away and the ever-expanding array of functions each of these has to offer has led to a massive shift in brand interaction through how and when people buy. Online buying behaviour is very fluid and dynamic.

Consumers now demand seamless interaction across all channels. Brand touch-points through all mediums are now expected rather than seen as a value-adding benefit. Customers want to interact with brands on their own terms and increasingly develop affinity with brands that provide a ubiquitous view of purchases, loyalty points, social media tie-ins and customized experiences. Personalized and location-based marketing techniques are moving from ‘desirable’ to ‘essential’.

3 Tips for Understanding the Right Mobile Strategy for Your Brand

Mobile marketing is not only necessary to meet new customer demands, it also provides brands with a variety of additional marketing tools to drive expanding business needs.

1. Mobile: The Service Enhancer

Apps can be a powerful way to enhance your core product or service and help develop closer relationships with your customers.

Apps such Bank of Ireland’s online banking App, or the RTE player App which allows users to view their favourite shows on the go makes the brand’s core service more attractive to customers. As a result, the mobile application is likely to increase the level of brand-customer interaction and boost brand loyalty.

2. Mobile: The Brand Enhancer

If your aim is to create an app for brand building then you must make it an integrated high engagement component of a wider marketing strategy. Coca-Cola developed a highly integrated brand experiences that encouraged customers to embrace mobile engagement in coordination with offline marketing activities in Hong Kong called ‘Coca-Cola Chok! Chok! Chok!’.

3. Mobile: The Business

Retails brands, particularly those who engage in online selling should explore developing a fully integrated mCommerce strategy and optimize the experience across multiple platforms, for both mobile websites and apps.

Amazon encourages customer interaction via laptops access as well as through apps on multiple mobile devices. Each touch point allows customers to browse, shop, compare prices, read reviews and share products with friends. Amazon adds value to the customer experience by giving them full access to their existing shopping basket, wish lists, payment and order history across every device they use. Shopping on Amazon has never been easier for the customer and the retailer has the profits to prove it.

The Starbucks app uses the smart phone as a loyalty card, making it easier to manage balances and reload money. In some stores, the mobile device can actually be used to pay for purchases. One of the highlights of this app is the ability to create personalized drinks.

Going Mobile? What you need to know

26,000 Apps were submitted to iTunes App store in the first seven months of 2012. With the explosion of Apps in the market place many brands waste huge sums of money investing in an over crowded marketplace. Apps like any digital initiative must be ground in clear strategies that harness specific business needs and user interests.

Whether creating a brand App, developing a mCommerce strategy or fully utilizing a mobile-enabled website, brands must begin by analyzing customer behavior and establishing goals for their mobile strategy. Understanding how to leverage data analysis and reporting to help build a great customer experience is key to becoming successful as a ‘mobile’ brand.

If we have learned anything from Social Media marketing in the last number of years it is that understanding the analytics is key to maximizing ROI. The number of fans, comments and click-throughs do not necessarily translate to bottom line results. Geo location data and advanced analytics need to be incorporated into mobile strategies to understand segments, influencers and customer behaviours.

What is the value of mobile marketing to your brand?

Brands need to develop a clear understanding of the mobile experiences’ value proposition to customers and the potential impact on the core business. Is the mobile experience going to be an additional sales channel? Is it going to enhance the in-store experience? Is it going to increase customer engagement with the brand and build loyalty?

The most important word to consider when adapting to mobile marketing is integration. Mobile marketing and mobile advertising for brands can only be truly successful when it becomes fully integrated into your overall brand strategy. It can be an incredibly powerful tool when it harnesses the synergy offered by linking with the other marketing touch-points. The mobile landscape is changing rapidly. Do not be the brand that gets left behind.

• Have you strategically integrated mobile marketing into your brand strategy?

• Could an ecommerce strategy help grow your bottom line and extend your brand reach?

• How are you going to leverage mCommerce in the coming year to grow your business?

4 Top Tips in Social Media Trends and Brand Strategy Planning for 2013

November 20, 2012/0 Comments/in Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, Branding, Customer Engagement, Facebook, Integrated Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Linkedin, Marketing, Mobile, Online Marketing, Pinterest, Return On Investment, Smart Phones, Social Engagement, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube /by Lorraine Carter

It is hard to believe there are only a number of weeks remaining in 2012. Harder still to understand how in the months since 1st January 2012 the business world has had to adapt and react so rapidly to the ever-evolving social media whirlwind.

The increasing sophistication of the applications themselves was expected but the new ways in which they have be utilized by brands and how it has impacted on the very nature of brand and customer behaviour has surpassed even the most optimistic forecasts.

That said, even social media brand champions don’t have time to be complacent with new trends in social customer behavior and applications already emerging for 2013.

In an attempt to stay somewhat ahead of the curve, brands needed to recognize the shift in consumer behavior on social media sites and be proactive in adapting their own online activity accordingly. Here are some social media trend tips that will increasingly affect brands in 2013.

1. Image Heavy Content

From image specific social networks like Pinterest, to image uploads on the likes of Facebook, pictures are sparking engagement by audiences of all ages and demographics.

Although relatively new to the market Pinterest is now the 3rd largest social network, followed by image-centric Instagram. Brands need to respond to online audience behaviour. Engage your customers by making brand congruent image-content a focal element of your strategy.

Free People clothing capitalized on their customer’s interaction on Instagram to create an engaging social campaign that transferred into offline sales. The brand attached individualized hashtag cards to its jeans. On the cards, customers were encouraged to take a picture of themselves in the jeans, post the photo on Instagram, and tag it with a specific hashtag.

The brand ended up with significantly increased brand engagement as hundreds of great customers photos appeared not only on their own feed but on their follower’s feeds too. The brand selected some of the images to appear on their website, turning its customers into models and engaging with its community in a creatively impactful way, all of which converted into increased sales.

2. More Authentic Voice

By their very nature social network profiles, even those of brands, should reflect the social element of the communication tool. Brands who respond to customers with a tone that reflects that of an actual person, and not an automated system, not only initiates a much better response with customers but can actually enrich the brand experience. Use of humour by brands in their posts has shown to elevate the level of engagement with customers too. A cautionary note though, humour should be used judiciously and congruently with what your brand stands for and is associated with.

3. Evolving Platforms

You might feel that your brand has got a handle on some of the more prominent social networks, and then they evolve, requiring a shift in social content element of your brand strategy.

The last few months has seen significant changes for Brands who utilize Facebook as a tool for brand development and customer interaction. When brands post on their page, it may only reach a limited amount of the people that Like that page. Facebook have now launched Promoted Posts which help increase the people you reach, for a fee.

Brands can now promote their posts so it gets better placement in its Facebook fans’ news feeds. They can also target posts based on specific location or language, and will be able to keep track of how many people saw the post. Your promoted posts will be seen by a larger percentage of the people who like your Page than would normally see it.

While this feature is a benefit to those who have a budget to support frequent sponsored posts, it also requires brands to change their posting activity in a way that encourages increased engagement from the customers that view the posts. Running competition apps encourages customers to engage and share brand content; increasing the visibility of brand posts without having to pay for attention.

Mobile strategy will not be merely an additional option for brands but should be fully integrated into the communication strategy. As more touch points emerge between brands and their customers, your brand strategy needs to be flexible enough to incorporate new technologies and tools that enhance the customer brand experience.

4. Quality Not Quantity

When it comes to online fans, brands are starting to realize that it is not the quantity of fans that counts, but rather identifying who are the quality fans that truly engage with the brand’s online activity.

Brands need to start understanding who, what, when, where, how and why your community engages with the brand page. Which fans are engaging with the brand’s online activity? What content gets the most interaction? And what communities are the fans sharing posts with?

Use insights and analytics to help you understand your actively engaged fans and followers so you can develop the best social marketing strategy for your brand and customers. Identifying, recognizing and rewarding your engaged fans and followers can be far more beneficial in developing brand loyalty and turning online engagement into offline sales.

The quality and use of the content created by brands online will also need to be reexamined. Brands need to stop marketing at their customers and instead increase the dialogue with their fans.

Increase brand affinity by listening to and learning from your customers. There will also be a higher demand for integrating the entire marketing process. The analysis gleaned from fan interaction online should be used to educate sales and customer care departments.

Its time to amplify your brands impact through a fully integrated brand strategy which seamlessly encompasses on and offline – marketing, sales, analysis of customer behaviour through both social media and traditional channels so you can drive your business forward successfully.

Maximize the ROI of your efforts by listening and responding to your most engaged customers and applying what you learn to generate growing sales in the year ahead.

• Are you learning from your social media analytics?

• Are you adapting to the changing online behaviour of your customers?

• Have you adapted your brand strategy to include the rapidly evolving world of social media?

How to Use Social Media to Launch Your New Product Successfully

November 12, 2012/0 Comments/in Brand Launch, Brand Strategy, Branding, Customer Engagement, Facebook, Integrated Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Online Marketing, Pinterest, Social Engagement, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube /by Lorraine Carter

Promoting, marketing and launching products to mass audiences are no longer restricted to companies with large budgets. Brands are increasingly turning to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and other social networks to instigate a buzz around the launch of a new product, and it’s not hard to see why.

The popularity of social media makes it the perfect platform to support a product launch. A successful launch requires an engaged audience, a platform for displaying the product that enables comment and feedback, and the facility to share the product information to as large a customer base as possible. There are few channels that can offer these elements for such a minimal spend as social media.

However the product launch should not be your brand’s first introduction to Social Media. To maximize the effectiveness of social media in launching your product your brand should already be engaging and interacting with your customers through social networks.

Consistently posting, sharing and conversing with your customers not only builds your following but it helps bring credibility to the brand. When launching the product through social media you not only want a large following, but a following that feel a genuine affinity with the brand and what they offer.

Pre-launch, build a community of online followers; customers, bloggers, market influencers and maintain active engagement with these followers leading up to, during, and post-launch. They will be key to maximizing the product reach.

Like any marketing strategy, using social media as part of your product launch requires a plan with goals and objectives. Identify each social media tool you plan to utilize and treat each one as a separate promotional entity.

4 Tips – How to Use Social Media to Maximize the Impact of Your Product Launch

1. Create a Buzz

Creating a buzz around a new product launch to market provides a strong platform on which to launch the product and develop customer interest. Word Of Mouth is one of the most powerful means of advertising and social media capitalizes on this like no other tool.

Before launching a new product the brand should engage with their biggest supporters; from industry experts to fans, followers, retweeters and commentators.

Build anticipation by giving them a sneak peak of some element of the product. If companies are able to get people talking about a new product and the upcoming launch across their own social media profiles through shared and likes then this leads to an increase in awareness among existing and potential customers. Promo videos, behind-the-scenes photos, product-specific twitter hastags, and competitions can be great forms of pre-launch buzz generators.

Not limited to just products, the NBA uses social media to generate buzz and introduce new players to NBA fans such as Damien Lillard this year who now has a substantial following and raised profile that wouldn’t have been possible several years ago.

2. Product Testing

When launching a new product it is important for the brand to listen to feedback from the fans and customers. By its very nature social media is perfectly suited to gauge customer and fan opinions and react to and adapt the launch strategy accordingly.

Facebook polls, hastag and YouTube commentary can all be valuable sources of feedback enabling the brand to build a targeted launch with maximum impact on the target market.

Aedle is a Paris based company who have used their blog and facebook page to inform potential customers about the development of their new product and get feedback as to its look and the materials used. They even shared video clips on the machinery used to create the product

They have created an audience of brand ambassadors that not only wait in anticipation for the product launch, but also feel they have been valuable contributors to the products development.

3. Expand Brand Equity

In today’s market social media is essential for a successful product launch but it is at its most effective as a complimentary tool to traditional marketing and advertising. Online video and web documentaries, bonus features and behind-the-scene extras can offer extended information and enhanced brand interaction to online brand enthusiasts.

4. Competitions and Rewards

Competitions, discount offers and give-aways reward loyal brand followers and act as an encouragement for their continued participation in spreading the word for your new product information. Early adopters and fans of a brand are always more likely to share information about a new product or promotional campaign with their own friends and followers.

Launching products online gives brands the opportunity through social media to reward fans and followers that are liking, sharing, posting, re-tweeting and ultimately talking about the new product.

Audi launched their new A1 in Ireland with an online and social media campaign that created huge buzz and customer engagement beyond any offline campaign. Rather than simply announcing the launch of a new model through traditional channels, they decided to actively engage their target audience and encourage campaign interaction and participation of the campaign idea ‘The Chase’.

A first for the auto industry in Ireland, this interactive campaign comprised of a range of different puzzles and clues to solve, utilizing online and offline media. The A1 Chase challenged its audience to solve every clue and track every lead with the aim of locating a missing Audi A1. The eventual winner of the Chase got to drive away in the missing Audi A1!

Social media provides brands with a fantastic opportunity to extend the impact of their product launch far beyond that of traditional marketing. That said, for a truly successful market launch your launch strategy needs to be a comprehensive plan that integrates all marketing tools and not just social media.

Whether you have a product in development or plan on extending your product line in the future start by beginning with expanding your social media presence. Create engagement, boost interaction and generate customer buzz. It could be the first step for future launch success.

• Have you utilized your social media to support a product launch?

• Does your product launch strategy include social media?

• Have you developed your social media presence to a strong enough level to be able leverage a potential launch in conjunction with the rest of your marketing brand strategy?

How to Use Pinterest to Inspire Your Customers and Increase Your Sales

November 5, 2012/0 Comments/in Customer Engagement, Marketing, Online Marketing, Pinterest, Social Engagement, Social Media, Target Market /by Lorraine Carter

Now the third most popular social network site behind Facebook and Twitter, the interest in Pinterest continues to skyrocket. The visual social networking site yields 2.3 billion page impressions per month and receives 4 million unique visitors per day. But what benefits does it offer to brands?

What is Pinterest?

In case we are getting ahead of ourselves lets back track and look at how Pinterest differs from other social networks.

How it works

Pinterest is a visual social discovery network. Users create online pinboards (like virtual corkboards) for various themes or categories and “pin” items to the board by;

Uploading the image straight to Pinterest from their computer, phone or tablet
Using the “pin it” bookmarker button located on websites to pin the item to your pin board.
Using the “pin it” button that can be added free to your bookmark tab at the top of your search engine
Re-pinning other user’s pins to your boards

On your Pinterest page you can create as many boards as you like and people can choose to follow all, some, or none of them.

Each pin posted from a website will automatically be pinned linking back to the website URL it was pinned from making it easy to locate the original location of the image. It is possible to link all your pins back to a particular URL. For instance, your pins could all link back to your website.

Users use Pinterest to explore and discover new products to buy, to search for inspiration and tips, follow VIPs and celebrities they admire and to create virtual representations of their own interests and lives.

5 Tops Tips – Pinterest for Brand Growth

Unlike other social networks Pinterest is not a platform for obvious self-promotion. Brands, be they a product, service, organisation or VIP, who fill their boards with images of just products or services they are selling, are not offering customers anything special that couldn’t already be found on the company’s website.

The true benefit of Pinterest to brands is enabling brands to convey a sense of the brand’s personality, values and shape the brand image, all of which, through increased engagement, can drive loyalty and sales growth.

1. Promote Brand Culture

For most consumer brands it is the idea behind the brand that makes sense on Pinterest. Brands should pin images that capture the essence of the brand. It can be more effective or engaging than traditional advertising because it allows consumers to understand how the brand fits into their lives.

Use the boards to show off your brand culture. Pin only what you really love congruent with your core brand values. Show the people and spaces that inspire your brand and not just the end product.

2. Pinterest: The Consumer Focus Group

Pinterest users create boards filled with items that give you an insight into their lives. By looking at their follower’s boards, brands can learn a huge amount about their customers; their hobbies, the food they enjoy, their inspirations, what matters to them etc. Users are effectively volunteering a lot of information about what they like. This enables brand custodians to get a clearer idea about who their customers are which in turn empowers them to be much more specific in their brand targeting, armed with the insights and information learned.

3. Extend Brand Value

Pinterest offers brands scope to enhance their relevancy with their customers. Because Pinterest is not about self- promotion, brands who successfully engage with their customers do so by changing the dynamic that may exist on other social media applications.

Brands such as yoghurt brand Chobani use Pinterest to solve customer’s problems and deepen their relationship with them. They use their posts to inform and educate about their products and ingredients. They offer recipes and, without over-selling and have become a valuable source of information for their customers which in turn generates lots of customer engagement.

4. Increase Brand Loyalty

Coupled with adding brand value, posting images from around the web and repining images from other users helps to personalize your brand and allows customers to identify with your organization or company more strongly. This leads to stronger engagement and increase brand loyalty. Repining content from other users helps to grow awareness of your brand’s account and attract new followers.

5. Drive Sales

While the boards themselves are about inspiring customers and shaping brand identity, each of the pins can be linked back to your website or e-commerce site where you can up sell or target the conversation.

While it is not always advisable to include prices or logos on your pins, including key words in the pin description will help customers find your pins.

The tone of the pin description should be authentic to your brand voice and consistent with other marketing communications and brand collateral. Including “pin it” buttons on your website will enable your customers to help drive traffic to your website. Jewelers Boticca found that Pinterest drove more sales and customers to their website than Facebook, and accounted for 10% of overall sales.

Doing it Right

Like any new marketing tool Pinterest takes some forward planning to be successful. Create a profile of your ideal target customer and keep that in mind when your start pinning. Ask yourself if your ideal customer would find that pin useful? Interesting? Inspiring? Entertaining?

Get feedback and evaluate brand ROI. Once you start using Pinterset use Google analytics or other analytic tools to identify how much web traffic is driven by Pinterest. You can use http://pinterest.com/source/ADD_YOUR_OWN_URL_HERE to see what has been shared from your website or blog to other users boards.

In a nutshell Pinterest is about currating different kinds of ideas from across the web into one space. For brands it is an effective tool for enabling social shopping, crowdsourcing and generating engagement.

Most importantly there is plenty of referral traffic to be had for the early movers who wake up to Pinterest’s potential and extend their online community.

• How does Pinterest fit with your online brand strategy?

• Are you using social media to effectively drive sales?

• Do you know how to enhance customer engagement using social media?

Who Controls Your Brand Online? 8 Online Mistakes to Avoid

September 28, 2012/0 Comments/in Brand Reputation, Brand Risk Management, Brand Risk Mitigation, Brand Strategy, Communication, Customer Engagement, Facebook, Linkedin, Online Marketing, Social Engagement, Social Media, Twitter /by Lorraine Carter

From revenue generation to brand equity development, online activity is at the forefront of brand strategy and the need to control and safeguard your brand’s online assets has never been more critical.

In this post-digital world the value of having an online presence and using online social interaction to enhance the customer brand experience are undisputed.

Irish brands in particular have made significant leaps in embracing digital technology to widen their market reach and strengthen their brand voice.

Brands need to examine who is really in control of their online property, and analyze whether their online activity is meeting the goals of their brand strategy.

We spoke before about the dangers of misuse of social media on a brand’s reputation. However, by its very nature digital technology is evolving all the time and with it brings new challenges for brands looking to maximize their return on online investment together with mitigating any potential brand risks.

8 Online Mistakes that Puts Your Brand at Risk

1. Posting Automatically

Social Media Management tools certainly have their place and provide managers with some breathing space when it comes to updating social media posts. However, in order to maximize their effectiveness these tools should be used sparingly.

Customers who follow your brand on a variety of social media channels will become irritated rather than enriched if they see identical posts from a brand appearing on all communication channels. It can also be detrimental to your online strategy as Facebook may prevent your posts from appearing on newsfeeds if they decide that they appear ‘spammy’ as can be the case using social media management tools rather than your authentic unique voice.

2. Posting on Twitter or Facebook Without Comments

Many spammers or accounts that have been hacked will simply post links without the inclusion of comment or introduction. Brands who post images or web links without including some comment risk being blocked as spammers or reduce the likelihood of customers clicking the link for fear of virus exposure.

3. Websites are Not a One-Time Investment

Websites, like shop windows, need to be constantly refreshed and updated to reflect the changes in products, markets and customer needs. Your website is often a customers first interaction with your brand and therefore the management of your website should include a constant process of refining and optimization.

4. Ignoring Analytics

Tracking and analyzing the performance of your brand’s website and social media engagement is essential to ensure you are maximizing your ROI in these areas. Use tools like Google Analytics, Facebook insights, Twitter Counter and other such applications to track how your customers engage with your posts.

Which post sparked the most comments and shares? How long are customers spending on your website? What pages are they spending most time on and what pages are they ignoring? If you are investing time and resources on your brand’s online presence then make sure your activity is as effective as possible.

Align the analytics with your brand strategy goals. If certain elements are not working them drop them, re-evaluate, and if necessary re-structure, your communication approach.

5. Not Owning Essential Brand Assets

Your website and its domain name are valuable brand assets. Protecting them from competitors and fraudulent entities should be a priority. Make sure you brand’s domain names are registered to your business and not to your web developer or another third party. Keep a back up copy of any custom web design work. Relationships between your company and the web developer may come under strain and it is crucial that your brand is safeguarded and that your assets stay in the control of your company.

6. Not Protecting Your Intellectual Property

Just because your business has registered its name or the brand name does not mean that it is entitled to the matching domain name. If you have the brandname.com domain name for your brand, there is nothing stopping others from registering brandname.ie, brandname.co.uk etc. Buying and registering your company’s brand name across a variety of domains will protect your brand from potential large costs should third parties register alternative domains and force you to pay high prices to buy control of them.

7. Facebook Pages – Who Owns What?

Most brand Facebook pages are linked to the personal Facebook profile of someone within the company. Make sure that the page owner is also a senior member of the company management team/board and that more than one person has administration control of the brand Facebook page to safeguard against potential issues that may arise with the social media community manager. You also need to manage the level of administrative rights granted to your social media team members and safeguard your brand against the potential departure of a disgruntled employee who has administrative access to your account. Take inventory of every page your company owns, identify pages that may be set up by fans or other third party and monitor these pages consistently.

8. Leaving Online Content Control to One Person

Social media should be a team effort within your company. No one person can truly represent the brand voice and have the answer to all queries. Brand leaders, managers, front-line staff, strategists, web developers etc should all play a role in creating online content for the brand. Their collective input and combined knowledge means that, as a team, they are best equipped to optimize social media interaction and maximize the brand experience for your customers. It also means you mitigate risk if a key team member leaves your organisation.

Embrace and leverage your online activities to grow your brand engagements and relationships positively but always underpin those activities with a well thought out and executed brand strategy. Ensure your social mediea activities are congruent with your core brand values and what your brand stands for. Be consistent in your level of online activity, respect good practises and social media etiquette and you will see your brand benefit and grow over time.

Does your company have full control of its online and intellectual property?

Is the online element of your brand strategy maximizing your ROI?

Do you track and analyze your online activity and adapt your brand strategy accordingly?

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