Integrated Brand Marketing

Business Digital Dilemmas: Should You be Twittering?

At present, Twitter seems to have four ideological camps. Firstly, there are those companies that don’t believe in its power, so they don’t use it at all. Secondly there are celebrity users, who because no one else compares in stature or ego to them, follow no one; they just treat the system like an advertising megaphone for their nefarious public offerings. Similarly, there are certain companies who ape the celebrity modus operandi and just update on their new products or services. Finally, there are those that do get it right, and understand that the real point is engagement!

And Ford Motor Company is one of them that do get it right!. Ford uses several different accounts to connect with its clients and fans of its many market segments. Ford attempt to ‘humanise’ the brand in their terms and they don’t use the sites to advertise as such, more product information and news updates. Links to some of Ford’s twitter sites are below.

FordTrucks

FordDriveOne

FordDriveGreen

FordCustService

FordMustang

FordRacing

The big imponderable, however, for those companies not already practising and uploading, is Twitter (micro blogging) the new marketing tool that they should engage fully with? The probable answer lies with the industrial sector you work in, and the nature of customer your sector prescribes.

Already some large UK retail brands such as Sainsbury’s, Habitat, and Harrods are twittering away, whereas others like John Lewis and Tesco are most definitely not. The key metric to consider, however, is the total number of followers – today Sainsbury’s has 636 followers, Harrods barely 150. Is it all worth the effort many wonder, but then Brad at Starbucks in Seattle has over 485,000 followers frothing with excitement, so is doing rather well.

By considering the concept of engagement, a key founding principle of Twitter, it leads into asking whether your company would rather have minimal interaction with its clients? Would you rather outsource customer service to the Philippines where the criticising bunch of toadies can rant at someone who doesn’t understand a word of English?

A further question to ask of yourself is whether you’re going to put in the effort to do it properly. Stephen Fry, probably the most famous and prolific tweeter of the UK with around 1 million followers is obsessional and produces 20 plus tweets a day. Do you want to go down that road? Of course not, but you do need to make a reasonable effort.

If you sell to consumers, then it’s worth considering, though if you sell insurance, probably not. If you’re selling cars, tweets could be used to sell some of your more hard-to-shift models, and your followers can negotiate online in return. Purepages is shortly producing a simple questionnaire, the twitterfactor, to formulate a probable answer. Watch this space!

© Mike Phillips. IBM B1 WEEK53 wc28122009

Sources: Twitter.com, Hitwise, Silicon.com, Computer Weekly

At present, Twitter seems to have four camps. Firstly, there are those companies that don’t believe in its power, so they don’t use it at all. Secondly there are celebrity users, who because no one else compares in stature or ego to them, follow no one; they just treat the system like an advertising megaphone for their nefarious public offerings. Similarly, there are certain companies who ape the celebrity modus operandi and just update on their new products or services. Finally, there are those that do get it right, and understand that the real point is engagement!

And Ford Motor Company is one of them. It uses several different accounts to connect with its clients and fans of its many market segments. Ford try to ‘humanise’ the brand in their terms and they don’t use the sites to advertise as such. Links to some of Ford’s twitter sites are below.

FordTrucks
FordDriveOne
FordDriveGreen
FordCustService
FordMustang
FordRacing

So for those companies not already involved, is Twitter (micro blogging) the new marketing tool that they should engage with? The probable answer lies with the industrial sector you work in, and the nature of customer your sector prescribes.

Already some large UK retail brands such as Habitat, Sainsbury’s, and Harrods are twittering away, whereas others like John Lewis and Tesco are not. The key issue, however, is the numbers of followers – today Sainsbury’s has 636 followers, Harrods barely 150. Is it worth the effort one wonders, but then Brad at Starbucks in Seattle has over 485,000 followers frothing with excitement, so is doing rather well.

By considering the concept of engagement, a key founding principle of Twitter, it leads into asking whether your company would rather have minimal interaction with its customers? Would you rather outsource customer service to Outer Mongolia where the criticising bunch of toadies can rant at someone who doesn’t understand a word of English?

A second question to ask of yourself is whether you’re going to put in the effort to do it properly. Stephen Fry, probably the most famous and prolific tweeter of the UK with around 1 million followers is obsessional and produces 20 plus tweets a day. Do you want to go down that road? Of course not, but you do need to make a reasonable effort.

If you sell to consumers, then it’s worth considering, though if you sell insurance, probably not. If you’re selling cars, tweets could be used to sell some of your more hard-to-shift models, and your followers can negotiate online in return. Purepages is shortly producing a simple questionnaire, the twitterfactor, to formulate a probable answer. Watch this space!

© Mike Phillips. First posted 19th November 2009
Sources: Twitter.com, Hitwise, Silicon.com, Computer Weekly

Internet Marketing

Purepages uses the web to

• Expand our clients markets and market share
• Enhance their brand
• Increase sales
• Develop customer loyalty.
• Communicate simple or complex messages

In doing so we aim to maximise the amount of relevant traffic and motivate the visitors to come back time and again. To operationalise our client’s Internet marketing objectives, we utilise three main mechanisms:

Search Engine Marketing: SEO and PPC

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is, if designed properly, is the primary tool for maximising exposure of the company’s website. It means that your chosen URL appears organically, at worst on Page Two of Google, and better still, on Page One when a specific search term is used. For example, when the search term ‘accident solicitors bolton’ is input into Google, www.fordlegal.co.uk comes at the #1 position. Ford Legal, a major North West UK personal injury (PI) firm of solicitors, is a Purepages SEO client. ‘Used Audi’ is a very popular search term which Purepages have successfully used SEO techniques to grow sales at www.usedaudi.co.uk, a major website of www.stokeaudi.co.uk, part of the Swansway Motor Group

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PPC or Pay Per Click is usually carried out on Google, the UK’s major search engine. Purepages are an accredited Google Adwords professional company and have had many successful campaigns on behalf of clients. High value keywords such as ‘used audi’ have a relatively large price attached to them, say £2.50 per click through, whereas ‘garden spade’ will be more like 10p per click through. Prices reflect the value of the product, the product margin or profit for the client company, and the frequency of use of that search term.
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Email Marketing
Normally email marketing is about producing creative and relevant adverts in HTML and Javascript which are then distributed using specialist software to a relevant database. Some company’s business development teams send out plain text emails to other companies or consumers, but these tend to have little or no impact. Adverts, and now ones with some animation, are where growth and ROI are key. Purepages is getting a typical opening response rate of 12-14% on its email campaigns on behalf of clients. Example link. This is around 10 times a typical printed matter flyer or newspaper advert
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Social Media Marketing
For most companies using SMM techniques, Facebook and Twitter are currently the prime vehicles, mainly because other SM networks do not yet have the credibility within the business community. According to a global Nielson (2009) report, social networks and blogs account for one of every 11 minutes spent online and UK-based mobile web users are most likely to visit a social network using a handset. So the frequent calls we see to ban access to sites such as Facebook seems naive as employees will always find a way.

• Examples, examples
  

Other Digital Marketing Techniques

Whilst the Internet is the primary technique in Digital Marketing, other interactive processes are becoming increasingly important. They include:

• SMS (texting or text messages)
• MMS (multi- media, pictures etc)
• Banner ads on high visitor volume websites
• Digital outdoor ads

While digital marketing is effective when using one message type, it is much more successful when a marketer combines multiple channels in the message campaigns. For example, if a company is trying to promote a new product release, they could send out an email message or text campaign individually. This, if properly executed, could yield positive results. However, this same campaign could be exponentially improved if multiple message types are implemented.

Similarly, an email could be sent to a list of potential customers with a special offer for those that also include their cell phone number. A couple of days later, a follow up campaign would be sent via text message (SMS) with the special offer.

Push and pull message technologies can also be used in conjunction with each other. For example, an email campaign can include a banner ad or link to a content download. This enables a marketer to have the best of both worlds in terms of their marketing messaging.

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