Beginners Guide to Developing a Brand

Branding: 

Some of the world's most known brand logo's are in the image on the left - recognise them?!

What do you think of when you see the logos? Probably the products they are known for but think beyond that....how does each brand differ from one another? If Google was a person, how would they be different to Microsoft, or how would KFC differ to McDonalds?

The point is, 'brand' is critical and it goes way way WAY beyond just the name or logo.

Sure you could have a quick brainstorming session to come up with a witty and memorable company name over a pint on a Friday night but what's a name without direction or strategy.....honestly pretty much nada.

Branding is about starting with the solid foundation of a sound business strategy, where insights and direction are based upon a thorough understanding of the marketplace and your potential audiences. One you have defined and understand your audience, the challenges, the opportunity, and developed a positioning statement, only then are you ready to deep dive into truly defining the why, how and what of your brand.

I created this three part 'Beginners Guide To Developing a Brand' off the back of educating and helping a friend develop his brand from scratch for his business startup of setting up a new Yoga School brand called Bright Light Yoga.

If you are new to marketing, setting up a new business, or simply want a quick recap on some of the fundamentals of branding, then this three part guide is for you.

As mentioned within the guide, there are various methodologies and approaches to creating a brand, some of which are not mentioned in this guide - the clue is in the title of this document, it's a guide. You may decide to complete all the points within it, you may decide to only do a few, or you may have another approach - that's completely fine. The point is, take what works for you - it's more about ensuring you do your research, consider the longer term picture, and really define how best to position your brand to your primary audiences.

I hope you benefit from it.

The hidden meaning of 40 famous brand logos

Do you ever wonder why certain brand logos are the way there are? Or why certain icons or strange looking type face are used in a companies logo? 

I do.

Brands can and often do spend significant amounts of time, research and money to ensure that their logo's are not only as memorable as possible, but have significance. The fact that the meaning or rationale behind many brand logo's are missed by the standard consumer suggests perhaps that some brands focus a little too much on the (hidden) meaning.

That said, from the obvious to the more mysterious, and the clever to the tacky, below is a great infographic that I first saw on Gizmodo that sheds some light on the often hidden meanings of some of the best well known brand logos out there.

Interesting reading.

Who stole my calendar? - The Economic Impact of Bad Meetings

Like many others who have worked in advertising and the corporate world for quite some time, I hate having unproductive meetings for meetings sake. Unfortunately I find the vast majority just that; inefficient and under productive.

No agenda, no defined outcome, no preparation points distributed beforehand, no clock to track the time but yet just a big block of colour standing its ground on my calendar that distracts me from being productive..........sound familiar?!

Yup.

This post is about two things:

1. The economic impact of bad meetings
2. Tips to maximise the success of a meeting in terms of time efficiency and outcome. 

The Facebook free bus has left this town

I recently read a good article by Jeff Bullas which raised some very good points about Facebook. For people who work within social media it is common knowledge that the proverbial Facebook 'free bus' has gone - this post is for the marketers that perhaps were not fully aware of that. 

Without alienating you with social media lingo that often gets bounded about ten to the dozen, my summary and takeaways below are in lamens terms.

Jeff's article focuses on the biggest social media platform of them all, Facebook. I think this is a very pertinent topic for many brands that are active on this platform.

For those of you who maybe aren’t too familiar with Facebook media / advertising, I have some bullet points at the bottom of this post that explain what is possible on this medium.

10 Ways to Use Psychology to Help Increase Customer Conversion

Let's start with creativity & data 

Often when we think about digital marketing, or any marketing for that matter, we talk about two key things; creativity and data. In my mind creativity and data are at their best when they are working cohesively.

Holistically speaking, creative messaging from the consumers perspective is that tangible, end result execution or executions of a message that drives initial and repeated consumer interest and engagement amongst the quagmire of every other message desperately trying to get the consumers attention. Creativity may be effective because it resonates with the consumer on an emotional level (E.g - makes you laugh, is fun, is sad, makes you happy, shocks and horrifies you etc), exploits a truth, and/or solves a problem.

On the other hand we have data, which if used properly seeks, identifies, measures and optimises opportunities to drive acquisition, customer centricity and product development; all of which then feeds back into helping creative be 'creative' and effective.

A few thoughts about what digital is, and is not

We live in a world where 'always on' digital is the norm, where women are kick boxers and guys wear cosmetics, where small startup companies are becoming the biggest companies, and where some of the formerly biggest companies are no longer in business. (Or rapidly losing marketshare and being squeezed out)

Why?

If I wrote about and discussed all the reasons here it would probably make for a chunky sized book, however I believe there a few top level reasons why that I mention below. This is by no means an exhausted list, just some key thoughts that immediately come to mind.

Twitter - Trust, security and the sheer scale of tweets (Talk)

Below is a short, candid and interesting talk by Del Harvey, who has the arduous role of VP of Trust and Safety at Twitter.

Twitter has come along way in the last 5 years! From 2 million tweets per day back in 2009 to 500 million tweets per day in January 2014, which according to her maths is an increase of 24, 900%, and equates to the 2009 per day total of 2 million tweets now happening every 6 minutes! Del demonstrates the sheer scale of the task of trust and safety on Twitter, and what they are doing to combat it.

Delivered in an entertaining and almost positively satirical tone, you will hear about cats, street slang, the international space station and geo targetted images.

This is a good-sharp talk with interesting insights that makes me think how enormous their task of balancing trust and safety, whilst allowing freedom of speech and the many exceptions to the rule to exist.

Social Media Growth (Infographic)

The infographic below created by Search Engine Journal at the back end of 2013 basically speaks for itself in that it gives an impressive graphic overview of how huge social media has become over the last decade.

Huge in terms of monthly active users on social media, time spent per day on it, mobile skew, and huge in terms of the number of brands considering it within their marketing.

Facebook leading the way

With 1.5 billion active monthly users and a 57% penetration rate in Australia (12 million people), Facebook is very much leading the way, but are brands reaping a positive ROI from platforms such as Facebook versus the time they put in? Across the board I am not convinced.

I think there was (and still is) a huge knee jerk reaction for brands to get themselves onto networks such as Facebook simply because 'everyone else is'. Don't misunderstand me here, some brands are getting an excellent return from their social media activity, but the brands that are are the brands that have specific objectives, specific budgets, and specific resources and roadmaps for social media itself. These brands have also moved away from the oh so very annoying and to be honest ridiculous metrics of success of likes and followers. The targeting tools on networks like Facebook are increasingly improving to the point of being pretty excellent, but with more and more people advertising on there, brands need to maintain creativity and proactivity (and a healthy media budget) to be noticed from the ever growing crowd.

The What & How of the Creative Brief




Article Summary:

In my nine years of working in Advertising / Marketing industry, I have seen, written, signed off on, and rejected many a creative brief; and that's just it, they are all very different in quality. The quality of the creative brief will have a profound affect on the end result; that is the creative and advertising itself. 

As per the old children's song of the 'Wise man built his house upon the rocks' versus the 'Foolish man who built his house upon the sand' - your 'house' (creative) will only really be as effective as its foundations (the creative brief) will allow. If the creatives don't clearly understand the point of the required advertising, its objectives, the audience and the strategy, then you are fighting a losing battle from the onset, and the advertising will demonstrate that. It probably isn't the creative's fault, it is result of the (bad) process.

The content within this post has been largely influenced by one of the first books I ever read regarding Advertising; Jon Steel's Truth, Lies, & Advertising. Although technology and the industry have evolved since he wrote this brilliant book, I believe his core thoughts regarding many elements of advertising, such as the Creative Brief, still ring very true. 

As a Digital Strategist and someone who believes Digital is often and unfortunately added to the conversation too late in the creative process, it goes without saying that I believe 'Digital' should be a paramount consideration throughout the entire creative process. 

One last thing - this post is not a guide to the perfect 'one hat fits all' creative brief, because that simply is not possible. It should be used a reference guide to understand the key core elements that I believe should be presented, challenged, and answered within a creative brief. 

SUPER China, Amazon the Predictor, & 10 Useful Marketing Lists

The post delves into and discusses two interesting marketing articles that I have recently read that are definitely food for thought, and also one really useful digital marketing resource.

• Amazon: There is the potential Ecommerce delivery game changer waiting to happen with Amazon patenting technology that will guess and deliver products before the sale even occurs. 

• China: It has become apparent that the Chinese online-digital market is, well huge. With the incredible online-digital user numbers, connectivity, innovation, increase in disposable income, rise in educated graduates, and digital trends occurring in the mahoosive Chinese marketplace; this is a game-industry changer that most of us aren't even aware of; and we should be. 

• Resource: 10 useful digital marketing lists. 

The Zero Moment of Truth - It's implications and history

ZMOT - Most marketers worth their salt will have at least heard of ZMOT (Zero Moment Of Truth), whether they truly understand its implications though is a completely different thing.

Some brands get it, it makes sense, and the implications of it are seriously considered in all marketing communications, online properties, and customer service approach and response. These are the brands that are growing, expanding, increasing their revenues, and have a satisfied customer base who by-and-large are more likely to recommend said product/service to their friends. Sadly, these brands are still the significant few, relative to the majority.

For some ZMOT is just another overused, overhyped, trendy yet misunderstood buzz word that has been added to the heap of other overused buzz words that continue to flood the marketing industry. It can be regularly used to confuse the hell out of most people in meetings, and further inflate already over-inflated ego's of those significant few so trigger happy to use it, without really understanding it, and more importantly its implications.

And yet miraculously, there are still some who simply haven't heard about it, and therefore should take time out to learn about it.

This post is a short recap about the Zero Moment Of Truth (ZMOT); it's history, what it really means and represents, and how brands/marketers can and should utilise it through all their business and marketing decisions.

The Worldwide State of Social, Digital, and Mobile in 2014 {Report}

This post continues the theme of marketing stats and facts discussed on my recent post 5 Marketing infographics - 2013 recap & trends for 2014 that graphically recapped key marketing stats of 2013, and predicted trends for 2014 in five infographics. 

Below is a fantastically extensive (180 slides) and useful slideshow report by We are Social that presents all the key statistics, data and behavioural indicators for social, digital and mobile channels around the world. 24 of the world's largest economies are digitally dissected within the slideshow; so a useful report tool to reference when researching and planning a digital marketing initiative.

It is of no surprise that digital continues to grow as the world becomes significantly more connected, particularly on mobile devices; with that so does marketing opportunities and capabilities.

Happy reading.

5 Marketing infographics - 2013 recap & trends for 2014

Below are five recently created marketing based infographics that summarise marketing trends, and consumer behaviours in 2013, and also what to look out for marketing wise in 2014.

As with all trends and data analysis, these infographics and the conclusions within them can and should be taken with a pinch of salt, as numbers can always be interpreted in different ways resulting in varied conclusions. That said, they have been created by key players in the industry with credible sources, so worth paying attention to.

The infographics speak for themselves really, however below are my key summary takeouts from them all.

Multiple Platforms:  

• More people (54% of Americans) are consuming content on multiple platforms (up 10% from 2012), yet only 20% of campaigns are utilising multi-screen campaigns = Opportunity.

• It is estimated that 36% of all search engine traffic in 2014 will be from mobile devices.

Responsive Design:

• Consider how your campaign can work across devices, and take heed from Google, the search masters, that all of your online properties should utilise responsive design.

Mobile Advertising:

• With the above in mind, smartphone and broadband connectivity continuing to rise, mobile ad-serving technology and analytics reporting are ever evolving, and more brands continue to get greater results and ROI from mobile marketing - it is of no surprise mobile advertising spends have increased dramatically.

• Mobile search advertising is expected to increase by 76%, and mobile banner advertising by 100% in 2014.

Content Marketing:

• If you are one of the few brands that do not have a content marketing plan, then you need to get involved. There are a number of business critical reasons for this.

• 90%+ of marketers in B2C and B2B used content marketing in 2013 - up by 5% year-on-year with 2012. 

• Google tweaked their algorithm 15 times in 2013 (37 times in 2012!), a big part of this was to focus on quality of content. Webmasters can no longer mine Google Analytics to access keyword data insights - bit of a blow for traditional SEO houses. Content is king, make it interesting, fresh, relevant, and accessible to everyone.

• SEO isn't dead but it has changed dramatically, there is a lot of BS regarding this in the industry. Make sure your agency truly understands the situation. 

• Content with video will attract three times the number of inbound links than plain text links (Caveat - quality of content, placement and relevance are major factors in engagement/success rates).

Marketing Automation:

• 78% of marketers who use marketing automation systems indicate these tools are more responsible for improving revenue contribution, and generate better quality of leads compared with activity that does not involve these automation systems.

• 63% of companies that are outgrowing their competitors use integrated marketing automation tools.

• If you don't use these tools or know what they are, learn about it as the facts are staggering.

Social Media:

• Social Media continues to grow dramatically in terms of users (1.15 billion on Facebook, 500 million on Twitter, 50 million on Google+, 230 million on Linkedin, 130 million on Instagram, and 70 million on Pinterest), engagement levels, technical capabilities, advertising dollars being spent on it, and availability of new and niche platforms.

See infographic #3 below for conclusive social media stats, and infographic #4 for an overview of key social media campaigns / stats by month in 2013.

#1 - Top Marketing Trends of 2013

Source: Uberflip

#2 - Marketing Predictions for 2014

Source: Marketing Tech Blog

#3 - Social Media stats for 2013

Source: Digital Buzz Feed

#4 - Key events in Social Media in 2013

Source: Infographic Promotion 

#5 - Hottest words on Social Media in 2013

Source: Social Media Today

Here is to a successful and exciting year of marketing, I am really looking forward to it. I hope this post has been useful, and as always feel free to share your thoughts and feedback with me.

About the author
Si Muddell is a Digital Strategist who has worked extensively both agency and client side. Si is fascinated about marketing, psychology & what motivates people, and loves guitar, surfing and travelling.

Get connected with Si on Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook

Five great infographics on Slideshare (Using slideshare to share infographics)

A little rant..

I haven't done quite as many blog posts recently - partly because I've been a busy bee travelling this amazing world of ours for the last 8 months, but also in part because I am a tad frustrated with blogger...

Let me explain.

One of the many content mediums I like to use when blogging are infographics. A good infographic really fits that old adage of 'a picture is worth a thousand words', and sometimes (often), less is more. They are a great way of removing the clutter often surrounding facts, they bring life and fun to said facts, and are useful referencing material to go back to again and again.

For the past 12 months of writing this blog, I have found interesting infographics to share, and used Pinterest to pin the infographic from the authors website, and then embed into my blog. After a few months of doing this - and with Pinterests frequent updates, I realised the embedded Pinterest image often broke in my blog, leaving nothing more than a broken image link; annoying. I like Pinterest, but this is a fail on their part regarding this. I tried simply embedding the image itself into Blogger but there is a bug in Blogger where images over a certain size are corrupted, again making them ineligibly small.

So, here we are now - Rant over and solution found.

Slideshare to the rescue:

I have always liked the presentation sharing site slideshare. Not only is it an amazing knowledge bank where insights and stats are 'ten to the dozen', but it also has a huge content distribution/sharing/networking potential.

In recent weeks slideshare now has the functionality for publishers to upload and distribute their infographics, and tools for consumers to share them. The simple embed tools make it easy once again for bloggers like me to share infographics in a professional way. Gold star slideshare.

So, making up for lost time, below are five recent infographics that I like brought to you courtesy of the new slideshare functionality.

Chao.

10 Great Marketing Talks you should watch

As all who know me will attest, I love watching great talks. They keep you motivated, inspire and help water the seeds of new ideas, evolve your knowledge, spark debate, and give you the reassurance that someone else out there is thinking along the same lines as you; or challenge your current way of thinking!

Below are ten short marketing-related talks that have inspired and educated me - if you haven't watched them before they are well worth checking out.

I won't ruin the talks by summarising what these talks are about - "an image (or video) is worth a thousand words" - watch them yourself and you will find out.

Enjoy.

A brief history of Marketing in an infographic

"Marketing started with the first human beings. Using the first Bible story as an example, we see Eve convincing Adam to eat the forbidden apple. But Eve was not the first marketer. It was the snake that convinced her to market to Adam."

The point being made in the excerpt from Kotler Marketing is that Marketing, in one form or another, has been around for a very long time. For as long as people have had something to trade or sell with one another, they have used a medium of marketing to persuade, manipulate, and influence people to choose their product over that of another.

From the birth of printed newspapers and advertising in the 15th century, to the tactics, intelligence, big data complexities, and creativity utilised in some modern day advertising. Marketing mediums and practice has changed dramatically and evolved astronomically over the years.

The history of modern marketing makes for an interesting read, and as with any evolutionary lineage gives you a nice understanding of how we got to the now, and who was involved. From the key dates, to the companies and people involved, the infographic below created by Hubspot provides an interesting top level history of marketing.

6 Steps to help you create a successful brand (Part 1 of 2)

You have a new business idea, you're are bursting with enthusiasm and energy to get the product or service to market, you have hopefully spent a decent amount of time researching the marketplace and have a clear understanding of your audience and goals.

Before you can get the ball rolling with all the many things you need to do to, you find you are stumped... you need a name. You may or may not know this but in fact you need a lot more than just a name, you need an identity - you need a brand.

When you look over the many brand logos in the image above, you probably look beyond the logos themselves - each logo represents more than a design - they represent a feeling, a lifestyle, a memory, a want, a need, a dream, a promise, a product.

Major brands are abundantly clear about who they are and invest significant amounts of money to ensure they preciously guard 'their brand' across all of their customer touch-points.

Hypothetically speaking - if things like cost and convenience were equal, what makes you choose Nike over Adidas, Ferrari over Porsche, Starbucks over Costa Coffee, San Pellegrino sparkling water over Perrier sparkling water, Shangri la over the Intercontinental hotel? Or maybe you chose Adidas, Porsche, Costa Coffee, Perrier and the Intercontinetal Hotel instead.....why?

Planning your Social Media content activity

This is a short post to give you the reader a top level look at creating and using a Social Media content calendar and what I call the 'Key Pillars of Social Media Content'. It touches on tone of voice, content creation and dealing with negative feedback, but these elements are not the focus for this post.

Before we begin it is worth noting and accepting that as with most things in life, there is not a 'one hat fits all' solution when it comes to planning your brands Social Media activity - we are innately and sometimes spectacularly different - what works for one person or team may fail miserably for another.

That said, I believe there are some basic pillars associated with Social Media activity that if constantly considered will ensure that your brands Social Media content remains exciting, engaging, and therefore diverse. By using a calendar you will be able to have a 'helicopter view' (sorry for the gregarious use of such an overused and underwhelming marketing term!) of your weekly Social Media activity.

Even though I use Hootsuite Pro and other Social Media tools in a professional sense, I still use a top level Social Media Activity calendar created and shared to our marketing and agency teams on Google Drive, which allows us to discuss and edit it in real-time.

Imagination is more important than knowledge

 Are we a little too obsessed with data?

We live in a world where everything we do can be translated into data, number crunched and put into a graph or presentation. This couldn't be more true of marketing and I can't help but think at times we are getting a little too obsessed with it.

What's the reach? How many people commented on this post? What's the vibrancy? How many people follow us? What is the best day of the week to post, the best hour etc....

Some important metrics but sometimes I think we do get a little too bogged down in these.

Digital Marketing Growth & Trends (INFOGRAPHIC)

The Rise of Digital...

Back in what now seems like the iceage, when Adwords had just began (Oct 2000), and banner ads on sites were just starting to be served by intelligent adservers, some of us knew-hoped that digital marketing was here to stay, dominate, and rapidly evolve.

Yet in 2006, I remember working down at the annual Internet World Convention in Earls Court London with my Digital Marketing Agency and being amazed at the huge (and I mean massive) line of Marketers lining up to listen to the Google Adwords for beginners seminar. For us as an agency the line and mass of people meant opportunity, an opportunity that resulted in a whole bunch of interesting big business wins for us. I just couldn't believe that some very big brands still didn't practice let alone understand very basic digital marketing tools and tactics.

Well 13 years after the launch of Google Adwords and wow - from mindsets and attitudes, to trends, technology and tactics - how things have changed for digital marketing.

I honestly believe that the masses in the marketing world both agency and client side are finally starting to get the value of digital marketing. Campaigns big and small are now considering digital at the initial stages of the creative and media planning stages and not just as an add on at the end. It really wasn't this way in some big agencies until very recently and for some the situation is still not perfect. That said, it's progress - and progress is good. As a digital man, it's great to see some of the more traditional advertising agencies coming up with some clever and successful digital marketing initiatives.

Below is an interesting infographic that shows just how much the digital marketing industry continues to grow.

10 Tips & Digital Marketing tools for every small business

Marketing can make or break a business. Like a thoroughly and thoughtfully organised dinner party, a well considered and executed marketing campaign can be the difference between satisfied guests that can't wait to come again, or guests that can't throw the next invitation in the bin quickly enough. It's the difference between your company dominating and thriving against competition, or just constantly treading water; or worse still, failing.

There are many simple tools designed to make marketing for business owners as easy and time efficient as possible. Utilised correctly these tools are your best friends, think of them as your royal armoury. The problem is that there are so many tools and opinions on the market it's sometimes difficult and time-consuming for you to find the best ones amongst the quagmire.

This short post is an interview I conducted with a good friend Oliver Mistry; part business owner of the very successful Personal and Corporate Chef company At Your Table, and currently Strategy Director at Leo Burnett, Sydney.

What better way to get some useful insights of a small business beyond the many purely theoretical posts I often read than from a successful, blooming, and fast expanding company that prides itself on service and marketing excellence.

This post follows on from a couple of recent posts I wrote that are also well worth checking out 'Digital Marketing & Social Media Tools' & '10 Marketing & Social Media Blogs you should read'.

Enjoy.

The State of Social Media Marketing (Infographic)

SMM - Should we?

Since time began for Social Media Marketing (SMM), the big debate and quest for analysis of the 'return on investment' from SMM has long been the talk both in the marketing world, and the board room.

As many brands were barely getting the feet wet with basic digital marketing tactics, others were starting to realise the potential that SMM had, especially at first in terms of brand/product awareness, engagement, and being a valuable customer service channel.

Below is an interesting infographic by WishPond that shows the state of Social Media Marketing. It consists of data collated from a number of reputable sources (Experian, Hubspot, Social Bakers,
Nielsen).

The Psychology of a Great Athlete

Luck is where opportunity meets preparation

I once heard a saying - "Luck is where opportunity meets preparation", and how true. We live in a world where less fortunate people can be successful, and a world where fortunate people often fail. Maybe they get complacent, don't try as hard, or just don't realise how fortunate they actually are.

Success, winning, 'luck' are a direct result of your preparation, practice, endurance, tenacity, willingness to learn, and failing....often! One of my favourite ad campaigns was Michael Jordans 'Fail Harder' ad for Nike where it goes through all of his failures, yet despite these failures he was still arguably the best basketball player the world has ever seen.

The inspirational ad copy was "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." - Michael Jordan

From sports stars and business leaders, to our family and friends; there are many people we can learn from.

13 Marketing Campaigns that dominated - Watch & Reminisce

So many ads....

Every day of our lives, we are bombarded with marketing messages, some (probably exaggerated) studies say the average person sees between 3000 to 2000 marketing messages a day. Other perhaps more sane studies suggest we see 247 images a day. Whatever the number, the key point is that there a lot of companies trying to sell to us; all of the time.

The more media we consume across the ever expanding suite of personal gadgets we have, the more marketing we are subjected to. Our brains cannot and do not process all of the images that are in a close proximity to us, therefore for marketing campaigns to resonate, be effective and grab our attention, they need to be impactful. And even if they do grab our attention, they need to hold our attention, make us respond in a positive way, and not drive us mad every time we see or hear it.

So, unless we live in the middle of the desert, jungle or the ocean away from civilisation, it's kind of hard to get away from marketing! Some marketing is memorable, relevant and grabs our attention. Other aka the majority of marketing is just the opposite, we don't remember it, it has no value to us, and/or the more we see it, the more it irritates us.

Your online life, permanent as a tattoo

10 seconds and I know you...

You meet someone out one night, you're looking to employ someone, you're trying to find Mr or Mrs right, your networking; the thing is you can quickly 'know' quite a lot about that person just by using basic tools on the internet. Think Google search or Facebook just by typing the persons name.

And here's the thing - What you know about this person is probably (or at least quite possibly) more than that person would like you to know in order for you to base your first and maybe lasting impressions on them. There's that old adage "don't judge a book by its cover" - but it is simply hard not to sometimes, it's easy to see/read something which may well be out of context and then subsequently form a strong opinion.

And that strong, perhaps jaded opinion may be the difference in you getting a job, or someone connecting with you or not, or you missing an opportunity that may be have been perfect.

Social Media Networks by demographic (Infographic)

There is always a lot of discussion about Social media advertising.

• From the advertisers "does it work? How do I measure ROI"
• From the publishers "Yes it does, spend some more $$"
• From the industry "How to calculate your Social Media ROI....Social Media 101.." etc etc

According to a recent Nielsen Report, 64% of advertisers said they will increase their Social Media advertising budget this year, so it pays to know a bit about the audience, and how they differ.

When thinking about Social Media advertising, or simply activity on Social Media Networks, Marketers may have questions like?

• How do I get the best ROI from advertising via social Media?
• Does it work?
• Who is the audience?
• How is the audience changing?
• How does one network differ from another in terms of demographics?
• Etc etc?

Well, this post isn't isn't about answering all of those questions, it is about the audiences, and how they differ.

Listen - Understand - Act: A simple approach for a happy customer

Maybe I am just over sensitive to things around me, but everyday of my life it amazes me how many companies I see that do not actually listen to their audience; be it their actual or prospective customers.

They also do not nurture the customers they do have effectively.

And the irony is if they did all of the above even a little bit they would be far more successful, and increase customer patronage and retention.

A couple of real examples:

Email & Newsletter Design Best Practice Infographic

Like Woody and Buzzlight in Toy Story, there are times were old and new can happily co-exist, especially in the marketing world.

Despite the rapid rise of Social Media, email remains a very effective marketing medium; caveat if done correctly, and should remain a handy weapon in every marketers arsenal alongside its counterparts.

Below is an email design best practice infographic.

Pinterest - Putting the IN in PIN

Since it's launch in 2009 Pinterest has experienced explosive growth. Some reports claim that active users on Pinterest in the US has caught up with Twitter, with 15% of adult internet users on each respective network. (Source - Tech Crunch).

Impressive.

The point is Pinterest continues to grow in terms of active users, functionality, and now its growing up by introducing its own analytics platform to capture the ROI crowd. Exciting times for Pinterest and marketers.

Below are a couple of inforgraphics that may of interest to new and old Pinterest users, which detail what it is (for those of you that don't know), the recent design and functionality updates, how people interact on Pinterest, and also Pinterest tools and other blog articles I have found useful.

Check Pinterest out, I believe there are a lot of marketing opportunities for brands and people using this platform. Don't be discouraged by the female majority demographic; the base continues to grow, evolve and attract new types of users. It's what you do with the platforms and how you market what you do that will attract people.

Old Spice 'Wolfdog' - Great creative once again

There are ads you love, ads you hate, and ads you just couldn't give a monkeys about.

For me, the last few Old Spice digital campaigns are brilliant, they press all the right buttons of an effective marketing campaign in terms of:

• Grabbing my attention
• Being creative
• Being memorable
• Making me laugh
• Making me want to share it with friends
• Positioning the brand in a fun way to me, the target audience
• Reach
• They are digital....which I love

I don't know the sales results attributed to the specific ads, but if reach, engagement, virality, and brand/product awareness is anything to go by, I would say they have done pretty well!

With my admiration of their recent campaigns, I was pleased to see their new 'Wolfdog' creative. So, if you fancy a chuckle, a few of them are below.

Great creative work.

Goodbye Google Reader, hello Google Plus

It seems like only yesterday that I was explaining RSS to prospective clients, convincing them that this technology was a game changer, and a functionality they must have on their site, to allow people to keep updated with the content on their sites; outside of their site.

So when I woke up yesterday and read the latest marketing headlines about Google reader being dropped, my heart initially sank. I was bleary eyed from the night before and I wrongly read this to mean the death of RSS.

But that of course is just silly talk.

Google has a history of unceremoniously shutting down its products, the most notable one for RSS would be iGoogle that was launched in 2005 and is due to switch off in November 2013. Much like Netvibes or MyYahoo, iGoogle was a great tool to manage all of your RSS feeds and one that I often used.

So now it's Google Reader that is getting the chop; but why?

3 Muscles of Branding & Identity: Curiosity, Appreciation & Imagination:

Branding and identity - what a massively important part of marketing, and also for us personally.

The way something looks, is packaged and is named, can dramatically affect peoples initial perception, and also the way a consumer may respond to a situation; which in marketing terms could be worth $millions.

Branding consists of many elements that I am not going to cover in this post, however check out this interesting and thought-provoking short documentary featuring Michael Wolff, one of the 'fathers of 20th century brand expression and identity'.

Michael Wolff, co-founder of Wolff Olins Agency and world renowned branding and identity guru, talks about his approach to looking at the world.

Michael describes the muscles of curiosity, appreciation, and imagination, all of which have set him up as a leader in this field.

The Psychology of Choice & Illusion

Choice - "An act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities" .

What makes us choose right from left, or one offer from another? Did we ever really have a choice, or was it the result of some marketers clever strategy of influence and illusion?

So many choices!

We are presented with many 'choices' every single day, many of them delivered to us through the mask of marketing, and calculated data driven decision making. A great example of 'choice' and clever data driven product placement is in Supermarkets. From the size of the offers signs, the number of offer 'choices', to the placement of the products throughout the store. There is often a fairly solid rationale in the decision making for the above.

Ever get to the checkout at the Supermarket and you end up buying more unnecessary yet conveniently placed items and offers, while you wait impatiently to be served? Yep - I do!

A brief history of YouTube in an infographic

In 8 years Youtube has grown from 0 to 800 million monthly unique users, 72 hours of uploaded every minute, and 4 billion hours of video viewed each month. There's no wonder YouTube is the #2 search engine, after...you guessed it Google; who actually owns it.

Below is a simple and interesting infographic by Shorty Media showing YouTubes incredible evolution.

Social Media Measurement - are we really doing enough?

Social - what's the value, worth?

What does a like, follower, share, mention, re-tweet, pin etc actually mean? What are they worth? How do all of these social interactions affect sales and retention, and how the hell do we compare an action on one social media platform versus an action on another? Should we? Can we?

All of the above are extremely valid and pertinent questions within the marketing industry, and to be honest, below are reasons why I think we are still a distance from having the real, or truly accurate answers.

This post isn't to give you the reader another 'Social Media - Return on Engagement' equation, there are too many of them about. It's really a discussion on how I believe the focus on 'social media metrics'  is a little too siloed, and what I believe needs to be done about it.

10 Marketing & Social Media blogs you must read

The great and awesome thing about the web is that anybody who is anybody can be creative and broadcast their thoughts to the world. Sometimes that can also be the problem, there is so much information available that it can be quite a task sieving through the quantity to find the quality.

Below, in no particular order, are a few blogs that I use for Marketing, Social Media, Great talks and general inspiration.

If you start using these blogs, share them with your friends / colleagues, join in with the conversations within the comments sections, and if you find an article useful, let the author know. As a blogger appreciation goes a long way, and for most bloggers, it is the reason they do it.

Happy reading.

Social Media Network stats for 2012

Wherever and whenever there is data, beware of the 'smoke and mirrors'. By this I mean data is often isolated to tell a particular (and convincing) pre-defined story. Social Media Networks
can have enormously varied audiences, functions and therefore user behaviour stats. A universal metric (think follow on Twitter or like on Facebook) can have a hugely varied value and meaning depending on the network.

That said, in a world where a new social media network is pretty much launched on a daily basis, and where the big boys like Facebook are ever changing things to monitise the service and further increase market share; it's interesting and useful to look at some top level user stats.

The infographic below created by Pardot is a useful snapshot of the most popular Social Networks in the Western World. These include; Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google +.

Pardot have collated Nielsen data to show each networks growth, monthly visitors, and estimated ROI. These factors have then been converted into a grade and presented like a 'report card'.

The Psychology of Social Commerce

Twenty five years ago, if you wanted to buy something, anything, you had a few of options:

1. Go to a shop / face-to-face with the buyer
2. Order via a catalogue / respond to a classified ad
3. Order via the phone

There was no internet, social media, and therefore zero ecommerce going on. Want to reminisce on evolution of Digital - take a look at this previous post of mine Digital evolution infographic. 

A customers decision to buy was based upon (in retrospect) fairly limited information, whilst the masses perception of the brand/product was largely based upon the advertising dollars pumped into the marketing, or 'pushing' of the product. 

Sure word-of-mouth influence occurred but only within a persons immediate network of friends, and the friends would have to know that the person was thinking about purchasing a specific product/service to know whether to give up their knowledge and opinion.

50 things you may not do anymore due to technology

It's amazing how quickly technology has evolved in the last 100 years, where routine tasks of the not-so-distant past have been replaced with automation, and where faster-quicker-better is the philosophy. Convenience, efficiency and effortless tasks for this generation replace a weekly chore for the older generation. Famous mathematician Vernor Vinge called this exponentially accelerating change, which basically means "accelerating progress leading to the emergence of more and more sophisticated technologies separated by shorter and shorter time intervals, until a point beyond human comprehension is reached. "

Whilst I am outrageously dependent on technology and all for convenience and removing the laborious tasks from my life, I can't help but feel slightly melancholy when looking down at the infographic below by Mozy. From video tape, to making mix cassettes, to written letters, and using the public phone box. Perhaps we are, at times, too reliant and focused on technology. Did life used to be simpler and seem more personal? Are we a lot more productive and connected now? It's probably a bit of both.

Facebook Graph Search: 7 implications for brands

Guest post by Oli Mistry, Digital Strategy Director at Leo Burnett Sydney

On January 15th Facebook made one of its biggest and most interesting announcements relating to a major platform update it is planning to launch, Graph Search. Graph search will allow users to search Facebook for people, interests, places and photos. Unlike other popular search engines the results will be based on the interactions and updates of the user’s first and second-degree connections. Their friends and friends of friends.

An example of this might be a user planning a holiday being able to search for friends who have been to Thailand. They will potentially get results that show their photos, see where they checked into and stayed, where and what they ate and therefore who to contact for advice and recommendations.

We all understand the power of personal recommendation or brand advocacy and its influence in the decision making process when it comes to purchases. This is a hugely exciting update for marketers and although there are no details out there on opportunities for advertising it’s certainly possible to speculate with reasonable confidence about what opportunities might begin to emerge.

So what does this all mean for brands? What are the dangers, what are the opportunities, where might this initial update be leading longer term and what should we be starting to think about in terms of actions and strategies to gain competitive advantage?

The first port of call when it comes to predicting future developments is to look for insights into the company and industry.

Colour: A Marketers tool of influence

Colour; something that a lot of us may take for granted, and fewer understand, yet something that can have a huge influence on so many of the decisions we make. Colour can influence our emotions and our mood, it can influence the things you take notice of and the things that you miss, and it can affect us physiologically.

For most of us, colour is simple; something is red, something is green, yet just like the majority of the Beatles songs, simple things if used and understood properly can go a long long way. Colour has the potential to be a very powerful string not just to the marketers bow, but also in everyday life and social perception.

Here are eleven popular colours with a brief description of what they stand for, the emotions they evoke, and the known physiological responses.

New year, new goals, old ways? A short guide to goal setting

So it's that time of year again where our bellies are full with all the great ingredients that make Christmas-Christmas (think roast turkey, mulled wine, cheese & crackers, chocolate....etc!). Our minds have hopefully taken a little rest from our normal busy work filled days, and as the year counts down its final days, we can, and should, reflect on the year that has past, but more importantly focus on what is achievable for the New Year.

Did you achieve your goals for 2012? What are your goals for 2013? Have you set any? What do you need to do in order to achieve them?

When it comes to goal setting, or in context with this time of year, setting New Years Resolutions, I think there are four types of people. We all have probably been each one of these at some point, and no doubt often float from one to the other.

1. The Doer
2. The Tryer
3. The Procrastinator
4. The 'I can't be bothered'

We would all benefit a lot more if we could be 'The Doer', when it comes down to goal setting. This article is a short guide to help you become the Doer, so that you can not only set achievable goals, but you can actually achieve them, and maintain a regular goal setting element to your life.

Here is a little information about the four types of people. Which one do you think best describes you?