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Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius

10 Steps to a Brand Disaster Response Plan that Works

disaster fireAre you prepared to face a brand disaster? If your brand reputation is disparaged and word is spreading quickly, what will you do?

Every business needs to have a brand reputation monitoring process in place as well as a plan to act if content and conversations start spreading that could hurt the brand, sales, and profits.

If you don’t have a brand disaster response plan, follow the 10 steps below to ensure you create one that will work.

1. Define roles.

Who will do what when a brand disaster strikes? Document it in your disaster recovery plan.

2. Educate everyone.

Every person on the marketing team needs to fully understand the entire disaster recovery plan. Every employee needs to understand the basics of how the plan works and what they are and are not allowed to say and do following a brand disaster. Furthermore, every vendor and business partner who could be affected by a brand disaster should be educated as well. For example, if your company outsources social media management to an agency, that agency needs to understand what you want them to do if disaster strikes.

3. Cross-train your team.

Disasters won’t wait until a slow day when everyone is in the office. They can happen at anytime, and key employees could be on vacation, in an airplane, or somewhere else that makes them inaccessible. It is critical that you cross-train your team so the disaster recovery plan can be executed seamlessly, even if one or more team members are at home with the flu.

4. Communicate with all stakeholders.

Prepare language to communicate with employees, media, shareholders, vendors, business partners, etc., and document how you will communicate with them. Don’t scramble after disaster strikes to put together email messages, online notices, and so on. Have them ready to go in advance, so you can send them out quickly with minor tweaks to address the specific disaster.

5. Invest in technology that supports your response.

Your response requires ongoing communication and message distribution. Make sure you have the technology that you need to ensure your messages get to the appropriate audiences quickly.

6. Put the tools in place to keep communication lines open.

How will your team communicate with each other when you’re in the midst of a brand disaster? Not only do you need technology to respond to external audiences, but you also need tools to communicate effectively with internal audiences, particularly with your team members.

7. Document steps to notify and update executives.

Communicating updates to executives should happen separately from your other internal communications, so document the steps that will be used to get these updates to executives in a timely manner when you’re in the middle of a disaster (and after the disaster). Share this plan with your executives, so they know what to expect from you and your team.

8. Prepare for all media distribution and communication channels.

It doesn’t matter where the brand disaster happens. A negative news story printed in a local newspaper could get shared in a Faceboook conversation and go viral very quickly. Therefore, your brand disaster response needs to reach audiences anywhere they get information—online, offline, and mobile.

9. Measure the disaster and respond accordingly.

All disasters are not created equal. Therefore, you need to have a process in place to analyze the threat potential of each disaster and respond accordingly. In other words, every negative comment about your brand on Twitter isn’t a threat to the future of your brand and company, but your employees need to know how to “rank” threat levels.

10. Stick to your code of ethics, mission, and vision.

Your response to brand disaster should be rooted in your company’s code of ethics and core values. Always match your actions and messages to your brand promise and your customers’ expectations of your brand.

Image: Brad Harrison

Using the Psychology of Consumer Behavior to Increase Marketing ROI

buy nowThe psychology of consumer behavior is one of my favorite subjects, so I was thrilled to stumble on an infographic from Help Scout (shown at the end of this article), which shares 10 ways to convert more customers using psychology.

Consumers are human beings, and human beings are innately influenced by their emotions and their psychological makeups. The psychology and philosophy of branding, marketing, needs, and actions are intrinsically linked. Ignore consumer psychology, and your results will be limited.

Take a look at the infographic below to see some amazing statistics from actual research studies as well as tips to help you increase the returns on your marketing investments by recognizing, adapting to, and addressing the psychology of your target consumers.

Some of the highlights include the following findings:

  • Adding a minimum to a call to action can significantly increase conversions.
  • Transparency matters, and admitting mistakes (even if your company isn’t at fault) can improve the perceived trustworthiness of your brand in the minds of consumers far more than pointing the finger at others does.
  • Without follow-up, there is a significant chance that consumers will ignore your messages.
  • Labeling consumers and making them feel like they’re part of a group (or the “enemy” of another group) will improve results.
  • Even very small surprises and rewards can have a positive effect on motivating a consumer to take action.
  • Consumers are more likely to have a strong relationship with a brand if they believe that the company shares similar values to their own.

Each of these findings shouldn’t be surprising, but marketers often forget consumer psychology and replace it with clever copy and trendy imagery. At the core of every marketing campaign that bears your brand’s name should be the psychology or your target consumer.

Why aren’t you getting the ROI you need from your marketing programs? Compare your outputs to your target audience’s psychological makeup. Do they match?

All purchase decisions have some element of psychological influence. Whether that influence happens when a consumer sees an ad or when that consumer is standing in the aisle of a store, it almost always happens. Don’t ignore it or undervalue it.

The world changes but human psychology keeps going. Don’t try to make your consumers adapt their psychologies to your brand. It won’t work. Instead, study them and develop buyer personas, complete with demographic, behavioral, and psychographic analyses. That’s how you use the psychology of consumer behavior to increase marketing ROI.

convert-customers-infographic

Image: Deb Collins

The Importance of Upsell Relevance for Brand Development

euros dollar growthWant to make a customer angry? Offer them an upsell that is unrelated to their original purchase.

Want to make them angrier? Offer them that same upgrade again.

Want to make them so angry that they won’t buy your brand again and will tell other people not to buy it either? Offer them that same upgrade one more time.

Making one more sale and increasing per-customer sales numbers are important for most businesses. However, upsell relevancy is critical to not only closing the additional sale but making sure the customer will return, possibly become a loyal customers, and even better—become a vocal brand advocate.

The key is developing upsell programs that are highly relevant to consumers at the moment they’re making a purchase. If you have the right offers, you still need to invest in training your customer-facing employees so they understand how to offer the upsell in a way that maximizes sales without negatively affecting the brand and jeopardizing future business.

At what point does that extra sale become less important that the potential future relationship with the customer? You need to evaluate this for each upsell campaign and strike the right balance for each opportunity.

Customers might be willing to forget that a salesperson tried to sell them an upsell that was completely irrelevant to them—as long as the transaction can continue without further delays. However, offering the same irrelevant item a second time is certain to cause frustration and irritation which will negatively affect their perception of your brand. Offering that item a third time is nearly enough to have them walk away from the current transaction and is guaranteed to leave a negative impression of your brand that motivates them to tell other people not to buy your brand.

What level of brand and future sales risk are you willing to accept in order to squeeze in one more upsell today? For salespeople who are working on commissions, what do you think they would do in this situation? They have to meet a quota or at least sell enough to pay their bills. Do you think they’ll let a customer walk away with the hope that they’ll come back and buy from another salesperson in the future or do you think they’ll keep pushing to close the upsell today?

Policies, procedures, and training are critical to developing and implementing an upsell program that builds your brand and sales—both today and in the future.

Image: Svilen Milev

The Generation Gap Among Digital Consumers Is Getting Bigger

The generation gap among digital consumers in the U.K. keeps getting bigger according to new research from Ofcom.

Every day, more people consume more digital media, content, and communications. The research found that the average U.K. adult spends over half of their waking hours engaged in some kind of media or communications activity. The use of multi-screen multi-tasking by 99% of U.K. adults enables them to conduct 11 hours of communications and media activities in less than nine hours each day. And U.K. adults’ media and communications consumption will continue to grow.

The Ofcam study found that U.K. adults spend an average of 3 hours and 52 minutes watching television each day and an average of 3 hours and 3 minutes listening to the radio each day. 97% of U.K. homes have digital TV and 48% of U.K. radio listeners have a DAB radio in their households.

Online and mobile content consumption continues to grow, too. The study found that 82% of U.K. households have Internet access and 93% of U.K. adults have mobile phones. 61% of mobile phone users have smartphones, and 16% of U.K. households are now mobile-only, meaning they no longer have landline telephones. The average mobile subscriber in the U.K. sends 169 text messages per month. On the other hand, the average residential consumer receives fewer than nine pieces of mail in the post each week and sends fewer than seven pieces per month.

Ofcam surveyed U.K. adults and children and found that the “Digital Day” is very different for adults over the age of 24 compared to young people under the age of 24. As you’d expect, younger people spend far less time listening to the radio each day than older adults and view less television each day than older adults.

Following are a few findings from the study about the digital consumer generation gap that brand marketers should be aware of as they develop their marketing initiatives:

  • Young people between the ages of 16-24 spend as much time engaging in text communications as they do watching television whereas older people spend more time watching television.
  • Young people spend half of their time “watching” media viewing live television (i.e., not viewed from a DVR), while older adults spend more than two-thirds of their “watching” time viewing live television.
  • Young people spend 65% more time using social media each day than older adults.
  • Young people spend 163% more time using their smartphones each day than older adults.
  • Young people are three times more likely to get their news online than older adults.

The digital consumer generation gap gets even bigger when you look at the habits of children. Ofcam found that smartphones are the most used device (after television sets) among children between the ages of 12 and 15, and tablets are the most used device (after television sets) among children between the ages of six and eleven.

Understanding the media habits of U.K. consumers is critical to ensuring your marketing campaigns get in front of the right audiences at the right times. Make sure you consider these digital media consumption trends before you invest in a marketing campaign that won’t drive the return on investment you need.

Biggest Threat to Online Video Advertising Success is User Behavior

mouse click computerAccording to research from Ebuzzing (now Teads), the biggest threat to online video advertising is not click fraud but rather “click away” user behavior. In other words, users are annoyed by online video ads and click away from them when they load in their video players.

The research revealed that 36% of video ads are not viewable worldwide. Furthermore, 50% of video ads purchased directly from video publishers are not viewable, and 66% of video ads bought programmatically are not viewable. Based on that data, it’s fairly accurate to say that two out of three online video ads that you’ve placed to market your brand were not viewable to all consumers.

In fact, that figure could be even bigger. Ebuzzing counted an online video ad impression when the video ad was viewable in a person’s video player for at least two seconds. That’s not much time. How effective were the ads that were only viewed for two seconds? It’s unlikely that they converted many people into buyers. That would mean that online video ad viewability is even worse.

Ebuzzing created an infographic (shown at the end of this article) that includes the data from its research as well as data from other research initiatives. In the infographic, Ebuzzing notes that improving viewability of online video ads by 45% can increase sales by 75%. Therefore, viewability is critical in order for brand marketers to maximize the returns on their online video advertising investments. Ebuzzing identified four primary reasons why online video ads are not viewable, which you should work to reduce to the extent possible:

  1. Online fraud and bots
  2. Ad blockers
  3. Video plays before it is seen by the user
  4. User gets annoyed and leaves the page

To improve your online video ad viewability and maximize ROI, test ad formats exhaustively and follow the IAB’s online advertising traffic fraud best practices. Certainly, traffic and click fraud are huge problems, but much of your ability to control these types of fraud are out of the typical brand marketer’s control. However, you do need to prioritize those things which you can have some control over. These include creating ads that don’t frustrate users by displaying poorly, being too long, being irrelevant, being too intrusive, and so on.

Furthermore, don’t forget that the problems related to online video advertising viewability and user behavior are exacerbated in the mobile environment. Given the fact that more people are watching online video using their mobile devices every day, the relationship between viewability and user behavior becomes even more complicated and more important.

online video advertising infographic

Image: Mustafa Kilic

Mobile Ads Get 80% of Clicks in First 90 Seconds

mobile ad click rate graph mouseThe lifespan of a mobile ad is very short. In fact, three minutes after it displays to a user, a mobile ad has already received about 100% of the click-throughs that it will ever get.

This data comes from a study published by Andrew Waber of Chitika on Marketingland, which analyzed a single week of ad performance on the Chitika ad network. No, this is not a large study, so the results are certainly not something you should plan your mobile advertising strategies around. However, these results are indicative of the mobile advertising environment.

At the very least, you should test and track your own mobile marketing ads to determine what their lifespans are. Based on the results, you might want to vary your creative, rethink your placements, or even retool your entire strategy.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the key data provided in the report. Following is a breakdown of the approximate percentage of total clicks that occurred throughout the first 330 seconds after a smartphone user loaded a page that included a mobile ad:

  • 15-seconds: highest percentage of clicks
  • 30-seconds: 46% of clicks
  • 60-seconds: 69% of clicks
  • 90-seconds: 79% of clicks
  • 120-seconds: 85% of clicks
  • 180-seconds: 90% of clicks
  • 300-seconds: 95% of clicks

It’s important to point out that this data is based behaviors among an audience of North American smarthphone users, but the results for North American tablet users were very similar:

  • 30-seconds: 52% of clicks
  • 60-seconds: 72% of clicks
  • 90-seconds: 81% of clicks
  • 120-seconds: 86% of clicks
  • 180-seconds: 91% of clicks
  • 300-seconds: 95% of clicks

Timing is critical in mobile marketing and regardless of device or mobile operating system, the click-through pattern for mobile ads remains much the same. If your ad doesn’t get a click within the first two minutes, it’s already too late. Real-time reporting is essential. Brand marketers are quick to invest in A/B testing and other types of performance tracking, but few analyze real-time mobile advertising statistics in order to make changes to underperforming ad creative and placement as quickly as possible.

Finding out that your ad delivered unacceptable ROI weeks after-the-fact when your agency finally delivers performance reports to you is something that should never happen in mobile advertising. Remember, your ad will fail or succeed within 120-seconds.

Image: Svilen Milev