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Lucy Nixon

Lucy Nixon

Following Scent Trails: Transform Europe 2015

scent-springer-spanielHave you ever taken an English Springer Spaniel for a walk? They hunt about, quartering the ground, following their noses down trails and truffling in the undergrowth to track down whatever it is that has seized their attention. And they come back wet, covered in mud and burrs, but triumphant with the excitement of the find.

I spend at least part of every day taking an extended walk through corporate websites. I’m looking to see how well they communicate with their intended audiences, so I hunt about, covering all the ground and following interesting trails. And, just like my springer, I’m also delighted when I find something unusual or particularly pleasing… though I do tend not to get muddy.

Our focus here at Corporate Eye is the corporate website, and how best to use it to support your corporate brand – and, just as important, how to avoid the risk of damaging the brand.

We know that it is a complex task, with a lot to consider. After all, we have over 1000 criteria we use to assess a big corporate website, never mind the work we do to help clients select the right software and agencies.

So it is always fascinating to go to one of the Communicate or Transform conferences on this topic: they bring together a mix of expert speakers, including those with front-line experience of making corporate branding work, and those with deep expertise in related areas.

Since we have a particular interest in employer branding at the moment, the mix of speakers at the Transform Europe conference looks great; among others, it includes people responsible for employer brand for EDF Energy and IHG, and also includes experts in sensory marketing, audio branding and experiential branding.

Fascinating… a corporate website may rely heavily on vision, at the moment, but there is usually some audio available. Sensory branding may be mostly intended for retail, but it will be very interesting to see how it might be applicable to the corporate website.

I suspect, though, that olfactory branding on a corporate website is going to be a long way off. It’s going to have to be a virtual scent trail for me still…

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Find out more about the Transform Europe conference on 21 April

Check out the shortlist for the Awards too.

How to increase your return on content (here’s a clue: Press Play…)

video-content
Remember that corporate website you visited yesterday? You know – the one that was very light on content? Or how about the site you looked at the day before? You must remember that – there was lots of stuff on that site, although admittedly it wasn’t very engaging, was it?

No? You don’t remember either of them. Well I’m not surprised…

The above scenarios may be imaginary, but the context isn’t that far away from reality. Let’s be frank about this. A website with low levels of content or content that just isn’t very good isn’t going to encourage visitors to stay around, let alone remember what the site was trying to say. And this kind of visitor response is of course extremely bad news if you’re trying to tell your corporate story and engage with key stakeholders.

So it’s no surprise that companies are spending more in the quest for quality content that’s engaging, memorable, and, perhaps most important of all, good enough to share on social media. The extra spending required to source good content has to be justified however, just like any other form of corporate expense.

At Corporate Eye, we’ve investigated how different types of content can deliver surprisingly different returns on investment or, as we like to call it: “Content RoI”. Now, a blog post isn’t the best way to go into much detail on how we measure “Content RoI”, but here are some key success indicators to look out for.

If the web content on your site…

  • Creates an emotional connection with a site visitor
  • Encourages sharing to social media
  • And sends out clear engaging messages about your company

…then you’re definitely on the right track.

It’s also important to remember that different types of content can deliver varying returns.

Text can engage and entertain (and I have to say that as the writer of this blog post), but even the best prose can appear a little flat on its own. Combine text with the right kind of visual content however, and this can increase a visitor’s willingness to read by 80%.

It’s also important to note that visual content doesn’t have to be well chosen quality images of the company team, products and services – we’re big fans of using engaging infographic content on web pages, because it’s a great way of grabbing a visitor’s attention and sharing key facts and figures fast. If a web page includes well-chosen quality images or inventive infographics, adding visuals of any type is a sure-fire way to aid content memorability, as we typically remember 80% of what we see, compared to only 20% of what we read.

The king of visual content is unquestionably moving pictures, and that’s no surprise when a whopping 60% of us say we prefer watching video to reading text online. Video can engage a view in a way that can leave even the best text and infographics far behind, and it can do it incredibly quickly.

If a website can include video of the right quality, and also locate it in the right place (in the site structure), video content can successfully…

  • Reduce bounce rate
  • Increase time-on-site
  • And increase recall.

Another great thing about video is that it can be used to tell different stories in different ways. Short interview clips with everyone from the company CEO to front-line staff can quickly get across key messages, ranging from strategy and attitudes to risk, right through to what it’s like to work for the company. Alternatively, videos that tell stories can be used to share everything from what a company does, to corporate values and social responsibility case studies.

Whatever the format of online video content, the rules of “Content RoI” still apply.

If the video content…

  • Creates an emotional connection with a site visitor
  • Encourages sharing to social media
  • And sends out clear engaging messages about your company

…it’s passed the return on investment test with flying colours.

If you’d like to see a great example of how video content can make a fantastic emotional connection with the online visitor, and lead to multiple sharing, then check out Corning’s three videos revolving around their “A Day Made of Glass” theme. These are videos that demand to be seen, and at the time of their release, demanded to be shared too, with over 21 million views on YouTube alone.

The Day of Glass videos are also great examples of custom-made content. And creating content of this standard does require investment, although the potential return, if that content leads to a sharing chain reaction, surely justifies the spending required.

So, the key to effective content is a possibly expensive custom-made video, yes?

Well, no, not necessarily – It’s also possible to create great video content, by using existing corporate video material that shares key messages or common themes. With some clever post-production and creative guidance, we’ve helped some of our clients use video they already have, and turn it into new content that is engaging, memorable and just asking to be shared.

If you’d like to talk to us about getting a better return on your web content, or how you can use visuals and video to connect with key stakeholders, why not drop us a line and we’ll be happy to share our knowledge.

Usability, Customer Service and Website Workarounds

usabilityIf your website is causing your staff to have to work around it, or perhaps even duplicate the work of the website, then it is time to review the site’s design and functionality.

Every time you find yourself explaining to a customer that there’s a problem with the website it should serve as a reminder to get it fixed—or, if you’re in a big company, to get a message to those responsible for the site to explain the impact on the customer-facing front line.

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Example:

I recently made an appointment online at a well-known large department store. It was straightforward and simple to do. Exactly on brand.

I was asked to pick a consultant from a list of names, or to select ‘anyone’. Not knowing any of the people, and there being no information to help me choose between them, I chose ‘anyone’.

I received a confirmatory email and a text telling me who I’d been booked to see, and what it would cost. Then, I received a reminder email and a text. That’s fine, though given I’d made the booking so soon before the date, it did mean I had a lot of communications in a short time.

Suggestion: if confirmation and reminder emails and texts go out within a day or two of each other, only send one set.

The day before my appointment, I had a message to say that they’d been double-booked, and they had to rearrange me. After the usual rounds of telephone tag, I spoke to ‘my’ consultant, who told me that it happened quite a lot. “Some problem with the computer system”. Hmm. OK. But this person wasn’t able to rebook me, so I’d get a call the next day.

At this point, I was considering cancelling the booking completely, out of frustration.

I waited. Another person called the next day and conducted a preliminary discussion about what I wanted. She told me that the problem was that not all the staff listed on the website had all the skills required for all the appointments, and the person allocated to me hadn’t had the relevant training.

Suggestion: if you are listing names on the site, and asking the customer to choose someone, give them some indication of which people would be appropriate. Or—better—force an appropriate choice: ideally, given service A has been selected, then only people X, Y and Z would be available to choose from.

Still, the excellent customer service skills of the second person meant that I did make the rebooking. And received another set of 4 messages to tell me what I’d booked when, with whom, and what it would cost.

That was yesterday.

Today I had another call, from yet a third person, to check that I had realised that I would have to pay in advance for this service.

Apparently, some people who book online don’t realise that they have to pay. Yes, despite it saying so on the website, and in each of the (by then) 8 texts and emails. So, the store calls people who have made a booking to check that they know they’ll have to pay. And yet they didn’t ask me to make that payment as part of this call (I offered; but they said ‘no, pay on the day’).

That makes 6 phone calls between me and the store dealing with this simple online booking.

Suggestion: given that the store has a high-function online shop (I know, because I buy from them regularly), why not take online visitors who have booked an appointment for which they have to pay in advance through the online checkout immediately? That way the store gets its money in advance, and people who haven’t realised that they have to pay, and don’t want to, will drop out of the process, freeing up the appointment time for someone else.

Final, and most important, suggestion: if you suspect that a web page isn’t clear to the visitor, then review the web page. Maybe the content isn’t clear, or the process is confusing. In this case, maybe a mandatory checkbox ‘I understand that this will cost £x’ before completion would help.

I know that people skim read online, but some usability testing would not only reduce the level of frustration in their customers, but also reduce the workload on their staff, and hence costs (a bit).

And I wouldn’t have had that brand-damaging experience.

What is Non-Linear Video Marketing?

We all know that the way we consume content online is changing fast. I invited Jon Mowat to tell us how he sees the best way to approach video marketing, given these changes…

Over to you, Jon!

omniscreening
Video marketing has changed.

Gone are the days of creating elaborate advertising and putting it out as identical videos, across as many platforms as you can think of. In today’s interactive world people aren’t just consuming video content across a multitude of platforms, they’re interacting with it and sharing it across vibrant communities and in all manner of different ways and at all times of the day.

As a result marketers are scrabbling over each other to get their brand noticed over the din. This is marketing in the frenetic and dislocated world of the non-linear brand narrative.

Omniscreening

To understand how non-linear brand narratives work we must first consider the environment that predicated their emergence. This isn’t just about the growth of social media, this is about how people consume content on social media across multiple devices, often simultaneously. This is a crucial distinction as it helps us understand the way multiple narratives can be blended together.

The consumption of content across multiple devices is called omniscreening and it’s likely we’ve all done it at one point in our lives (many of us will do it on a regular basis). More often than not it involves sitting in front of the television while consuming content on your smartphone or tablet at the same time. It is this idle flicking between screens that has offered video marketers the potential to emigrate from the television advert break and colonise the content we consume on every screen we stare at. These are brand narratives that span platforms and formats and they are extremely powerful.

Omniscreening lies at the heart of the non-linear narrative and it has come about as a result of the habits we have fallen into in this 24/7 digitally connected age.

Minutes and Moments

Dr Simon Hampton is a psychology lecturer at the University of East Anglia and has noted that our tendency to flick between screens is grounded in basic and well understood human psychology.

“People’s inability to leave their phone alone is the newest addition to common displacement behaviours such as smoking, doodling, fiddling and picking. 62% of 18 – 32 year olds prefer to check their smartphone if they have any ‘downtime’ rather than just sit and think and 37% say they check their smartphone if there’s a lull in conversation with friends.”

Hampton’s studies have informed the concept of what I call minutes and moments. For most of its existence, traditional video marketing has been more or less confined to the television screen but now we carry our screens around with us in our pockets.

Advertising and marketing your brand on these mobile forever-connected screens is a world away from the passive audiences of the traditional TV ad break.

Consumers are often seeking out content without knowing what it is beforehand, browsing through a sea of information to fill that two minute window. Attention spans in this content saturated world are far shorter and can switch off or flick between apps and videos in a split second, so it’s become crucial to grab their attention in a short space of time.

These are the ‘moments’ in our non-linear narrative and they involve strong, bold emotional grabs utilising short form content on platforms like YouTube but notably also Vine and Instagram.

Telling a Story While Guiding Behaviour

Video marketers have long understood the need for emotional marketing to build brand recognition but linear advertising, however emotionally powerful, is not enough. Establishing non-linear narratives across social media and television allows consumers to engage and influence the story as it evolves and even tell their own stories, exploring your brand in a far more organic way. Marketing on Vine, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms involves understanding each platform and the audience you are engaging with on it. The desires, interests and demographics of avid Vine consumers may differ significantly from the casual YouTube consumer.

Vine users are interested in short, snappy messages, entertaining video clips that loop well and other bite-size content. Vine is great for reminding people about your brand, but it does not work so well for education. YouTube, on the other hand, allows for longer videos and attracts viewers who are willing to watch that content. YouTube videos can be longer and more educational or can tell a more detailed story. What works well when you are marketing in minutes is not the same as what works when you are marketing in moments.

It’s easy to mistake marketing in moments as simply trying to make noise by making bold evocative statements, but it is also crucial that you establish your narrative in these short vignettes. Brand recognition precedes and confirms brand association, which in turn created brand identity. Taking a viewer through this subconscious journey can be a subtle one and involve a number of different videos before an association has been made and a narrative ‘theme’ or ‘arc’ can be established. A shared video on Facebook here and a randomly discovered Vine there builds a picture and slowly draws the viewer into the wider narrative. These are when your minutes come in and it’s where you can actually talk about the benefits of your product in a more down to earth and more logical manner… in other words, this is the part where you get the chance to actually try and sell something.

Thanks, Jon…

Jon Mowat is the Managing Director and creator of Bristol based video production company, Hurricane Media, and has brought his expertise to bear across a number of successful content and video content marketing campaigns for both large blue chip corporations and small to medium sized businesses.

6 Sins of Marketing Automation

Today’s post is by Ryan Chester, who wanted to talk about automating marketing – and how it can go wrong. Over to you, Ryan!

marketing-automationBesides being the current buzzword, marketing automation has become a large thing, and a real thing. There are many billion dollar players in the space.

As an executive in a large corporation you’re constantly evaluating what software to invest in, and among them marketing automation software sits near the top. It has become the most in-demand tool for marketing professionals. It helps large companies turn leads into customers by nurturing them correctly, and create additional sales from existing customers.

It’s becoming undeniably useful, and helps you manage everything from landing pages, content marketing, email marketing and the list goes on!

While you’re starting off in adopting these things for your corporation, you want to make sure you avoid a few things that could cost your company some big bucks or worse – some jobs!

1st Sin – No Strategy

You can’t use marketing automation and not have a documented strategy. How do you expect your marketing team of 25+ people to know what to do?

This is where you take your company’s goals and tie it into the strategy. You have to work hard in the beginning to make sure there is good alignment. It’ll enable an easier time later managing and achieving your goals.

It doesn’t matter whether you use Hubspot, Marketo or Infusionsoft, make sure you have a strategy! The best tool can only do so much.

2nd Sin – Treating everyone the same

Even if you’re only using email marketing tools like Mailchimp or Constant contact, you’re able to segment your audience. This is one area that you can’t make excuses since it’s considered a rudimentary practice. Forgetting this, is like forgetting your own birthday.

You don’t want to blast everyone with the same content. If you’re asking why; it’s because you want to make sure your message is customized for every time of customer group. If you’re a large electronics manufacturer, your customers could be anyone from Boeing, Tesla, Northrop Grumman or Apple. Each one has a different set of needs, behaviours and interests.

3rd Sin – Just using the email marketing function

Most marketing automation tools are more than email marketing tools.

Traditional form of email marketing (or as I call it blasting) is dead. Now you have to be smarter, you have to segment and you have to customize your message based on the audience receiving it.

Today’s marketing automation tools will let you send specific emails based on the pages they visit on your website, or if they complete a specific sequence of events they perform such as visiting your website, downloading an eBook and signing up for a webinar. Make sure you use these tools to the full extent to gain your competitive advantage!

4th Sin – No good content

Content is king. This has been true for the last decade and will continue to be true for the foreseeable future. Think about it for a second. What else would you be sending your audience besides content?

Don’t just churn out any old content, put some deep thought into it and make it useful! If you’ve segmented your audience, you should also define a buyer persona for each group. This will give you an idea what type of content to create them. Additionally look at gaps in your content, and fill them! This way you won’t have difficulty turning visitor to a customer.

5th Sin – Absent marketing and sales process

If you’re like most companies, you’re using your marketing automation to generate leads for your sales team. This requires you to have an effective way of managing everything. If you don’t set up a process, then you might as well not use these tools.

Of course, this doesn’t substitute for an efficient sales team. You need closers still. Marketing automation will guide them, educate them and spark their interest, but it is still up to your team to close the deals.

6th Sin – Not nurturing

Lead management is key to help your sales team close deals. Lead nurturing is essential to keep them warm throughout the buying process, and to make sure your competitors don’t sneak in!

When your prospect comes to you in the beginning, you want to nurture them by sending useful content in forms of blog articles they should read, email notifying them of webinars, etc… This way you lead them out of the “interest” phase of the purchasing funnel right into the “desire” phase.

Thanks, Ryan!

Ryan Chester is a digital marketing connoisseur who loves anything related to search engine optimization, growth-hacking, pay-per-click, analytics or email marketing. He works at AnnexCore.com , developing digital marketing strategies for enterprises worldwide.

Candidate Outreach: LinkedIn

welcome
Can I ask you a question? Have you heard of a social network called LinkedIn by any chance? Well, of course you have, and maybe you’ve just checked your own profile for updates (Still no news on that Richard Branson connect request? Oh well, maybe he’s busy).

With over 332 million members worldwide, Linkedin has become the place for professionals to network, share ideas, and recruit, and it’s not just a place for professionals either. The fastest growing demographic on Linkedin are students and recent college graduates, so, with a potential audience of experienced hires and brand new recruits, it’s no surprise that most companies use the network to share recruiting content, even it’s just listing existing vacancies.

There more than 4 million company outposts on LinkedIn, and although we work pretty hard at Corporate Eye, we haven’t checked them all out yet. We have seen quite a few however, and we’ve discovered some company pages that are very good indeed where recruiting and career messages are concerned.

So, if you have a company outpost on LinkedIn, how do you know if it’s any good, or could be better?

The good news is that we’ve come up with 3 basic rules to make your LinkedIn company page a constructive part of your online recruitment strategy:

  1. Share key messages, like: Why join us?

    The chase is on to recruit the best. If your business wants to attract in-demand high calibre recruits, it needs to project key messages that explain why they should join you, and not one of your rivals. A LinkedIn outpost can be an ideal place to explain your culture and share your employee value proposition. By sharing these key: “Why us?” messages, a company can vastly improve its chances of recruiting high quality candidates. Hopefully you’ll already have some content like this on your website, so not share it on your LinkedIn page?

  2. Engage with video

    59% of senior executives prefer to watch video instead of reading text, according to Forbes Insight, and why should potential new recruits be any different? Web statistics have shown a steadily increasing rise in the use of video content, with projections suggesting this will continue to rise. An engaging, well made video clip, like an interview or company overview, can engage and communicate key messages fast. If you already have good video content on your corporate website, why not link to it from your LinkedIn outpost?

  3. Start talking

    A company LinkedIn page can provide a great platform for directly communicating with potential recruits. This could involve answering applicant queries, elaborating on any corporate content shared on your LinkedIn page, and explaining in more detail what sort of candidate you’re looking for regards a specific vacancy. And if a company is seen to be engaging with candidates online, this also sends out powerful messages about how willing your company is to engage with applicants.

If your company LinkedIn outpost is already obeying our 3 basic rules, then we have only one thing to say to you: Well done!

However it’s important to add that we think that these are just the basics a company LinkedIn page should be doing to reach out to the right kind of candidate, and there are other ways to build an effective career strategy through social media (and other social media platforms too).

If you’d like talk to us about using social media to hire the right people, through LinkedIn or any other social media outposts, why not drop us a line and we’ll be happy to share our knowledge.