Marketing campaign planning mistakes

Make sure you avoid these classic campaign planning mistakes

We’ve all seen it. The #fail where a company that’s big enough to know better, completely messes up.

The odd thing is that this continues to happen and I guess until the machines take over, that will continue. Whether it’s politics or business, rarely do organisations learn from their predecessors.

At Smart Insights we share best practice, hope that you find our content useful and can apply this directly to your organisations, so in this new guide we have explored 10 marketing campaign planning mistakes, with case study companies such as Absolut Vodka, Admiral Insurance, British Airways, Coca-Cola, HMV, Kodak, McDonald's, Southern Rail, Starbucks, and Waitrose, as well as the two primary candidates in the US presidential campaign and the recent Olympics.

Download Expert Member resource – Marketing Campaign Planning Mistakes

Our practical and actionable guide will help you plan your marketing campaigns better, the guide aims to help you plan better, integrate more and use digital media effectively.

Access the Marketing Campaign Planning Mistakes

The errors in all cases are fundamentally about a failure in strategy.

Some companies like HMV and Kodak missed the boat completely, believing that technology would not change their brand. They failed to plan and subsequently had to be reinvented after significant overhauls.

Other companies illustrate mistakes involving elements of a digital marketing plan. The missing aspects include the lack of brand integration, where clearly there are too many people managing the communications, but one person to coordinate or control is absent. The other extreme is over-protecting a brand to the point where the target audience is nervous about mentioning the name, resulting in fewer brand conversations taking place.

Understanding your audience is an area we’ve been talking about for years. We’ve created persona toolkits to ensure organisations better match the online experience to the targeted customer. Yet many well-known brand names have failed miserably in understanding their audiences, resulting in major political embarrassment and insult.

With the growth of social media, some newer mistakes are emerging. Such as not understanding data use, to not understanding content within social media platforms. I enjoyed watching the US presidential campaign and the near textbook-use of social media, by the now President Trump, in contrast to the inadequate management of social media, by team Clinton. If only the Clinton team had realised that social media contributed to the success of the last two elections in the USA.

It can be difficult for managers (and politicians) who have worked in traditional marketing for years, to ‘read’ social media and identify potential pitfalls. Whilst there is no guidebook to ‘what not to do’ we try to support our members with best practice. We know that the rules change frequently and that sometimes the issues are outside the marketing teams’ control, like the ongoing saga of #SouthernFail.

What does surprise me, are the companies with large budgets, over £10 million a year, who still continue to fail and make mistakes in a digital environment. Whether it’s not joining together or integrating the online communications or not connecting online and offline. This should give us ordinary marketers, on smaller budgets, hope for the future.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/traffic-building-strategy/marketing-campaign-planning-mistakes/

A SOSTAC® Plan example

How to create a digital marketing plan using PR Smith's SOSTAC® Planning model

SOSTAC is a widely used tool for marketing and business planning which is rated in the top 3 most popular marketing models in the Smart Insights review of Marketing Models that have stood the test of time.

In this post I give an example of how I have applied PR Smith’s SOSTAC® Planning Model - which is my interpretation of SOSTAC®.

Further guidance and examples are available in the Smart Insights guide for Expert members by PR Smith and this post by Dave Chaffey giving an overview of the SOSTAC® model.

Download resource – Creating a Digital Marketing plan with SOSTAC®

A guide for Expert members to creating a digital marketing plan using SOSTAC® by PR Smith, the creator of the method.

Access the SOSTAC® Digital Marketing Planning Guide

Originally created in the 1990s by writer and speaker PR Smith, the SOSTAC® framework has built an authoritative reputation as the framework of choice for different scales of  business including multinational and startup organisations across the world.

The SOSTAC® process covers six key areas which I'll explain in this post:

• Situation Analysis
• Objectives
• Strategy
• Tactics
• Action
• Control

If you're looking for a visual example, the process for creating a digital marketing plan has also been summarised in this Multichannel Marketing Plan infographic. My recommendations cover many of these planning and management activities, but not all, due to space.

Stage 1. Situation Analysis

Stage 1 of implementing this digital marketing planning framework is setting out the situation analysis. The situation should provide an overview of your organisation – who you are, what you do and how you interact and trade online by addressing internal and external factors impacting the business.

This section should be painting a picture of your organisation and to do this, consider using some of the following methods to bring this section to life:

1. Who your digital customers currently are (how do they interact with the brand, the platform/s used, demographic breakdown.
2. SWOT analysis – what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the whole organisation.
3. Competitor analysis – who are your competitors? How do they compete? e.g. price, product, customer service, reputation, what are their key differentiators?.
4. Digital channels landscape. list out all the various digital channels used and success of each for your organisation – what’s performing well or not?.

Below I’ve gone into a bit more detail for a few of these areas:

Digital Customers

An analysis of who your digital audience is should be defined in a section. This is essential to ensure you’re providing a clear picture of existing customers and who you are looking to also target. If you’re operating in a competitive environment, consider including what your online value proposition (OVP) is should you have one?

For example, how do you envision your organisation to differentiate itself from the competition? To help define your organisations OVP, David Chaffey recommends the 6Cs of customer motivation framework.

Customers Personas

Creating customer personas helps brings to life who your existing customers are and what their motivations are. Persona creation also helps to get buy-in across your organisation in helping to paint a picture and bring to life your customer profiles. To create a series of personas, a majority of this work can be completed by extracting existing data through your CRM system and analytics and then build on this to create a profile picture of your existing customers.

For an e-commerce retailer, information you could consider extracting from your CRM could include:

• Male/Female Split – What is the percentage split?
• Age profiling – Average age as well as being able to develop categories of age groupings
• Location/Address details – Percentage of customers who reside in the UK as well as overseas
• Purchase history – Build up a clearer picture on historical purchases, average order value, trends in brand loyalty, products ordered by size
• Method of purchase (e.g. credit card, debit card, cheque)
• Route to purchase – Were purchases made through a search engine, email newsletter, affiliate website, direct from site or through the call centre, i.e. Mixed-mode
• Frequency/Recency – Frequency of purchase?

Fictional Online Retailer to show how personas work

Based on this data, the next stage is to turn this data into more of a personality that your organisation can relate to. For example, I’ve created 2 x personas for a fictional online retailer:

Persona A:

Steve is a 28 yr old professional, renting in London, single and with a high disposable income. He has a keen interest in football and supports a premiership football team. He likes to display his support for his football club every year, buying the clubs latest replica shirt online.

Steve is comfortable in ordering online and engaging with social media to keep up to date with the latest football news and football product launches. As the World Cup provides the chance to showcase international replica shirts, this provides Company X with the chance to engage with Steve to make an additional purchase of an international replica shirt as well as purchasing his favourite club shirt.

Scenario:

Steve has been reading the latest new stories regarding the World Cup through his favourite football blog site. Steve notices the blog has an exclusive promotion to order any World Cup football shirt of your choice from Company X and save 10% by clicking on a link to www.companyx.co.uk/worldcup. Steve clicks on the link and arrives at Company X which brings up a list of World Cup shirts available to order displaying the exclusive 10% discount promotion. Steve chooses the shirt of his choice in his preferred shirt size and completes a transaction using his credit card.

Persona B:

Clare is a 33 yr old professional who is in a relationship. She likes to keep up with the latest fashion trends and is comfortable in ordering at her favourite online shop. Her boyfriend is a keen football fan who likes to keep up with football fashion by purchasing the latest football replica shirts of his favourite team. Clare may engage with the hype of the World Cup and this could provide an opportunity to for her to make and purchase at Company X for her boyfriend and the International team they choose to support during the tournament.

Scenario:

Clare has received an email from one of her preferred online retailers which includes a cross marketing promotion to Company X, where you can order your World cup shirt by quoting a promotional code. Clare thinks this would make a great gift for her partner and decides to click through to www.companyx.co.uk. She is unsure of the team and shirt to order so decides to phone the order helpline and take advantage of mixed-mode buying. Clare explains her situation over the phone to the sales consultant and places her order over the phone for the football shirt.

You can see more examples and guidance in the Smart Insights Persona Toolkit.

SWOT analysis

It’s worth considering creating a SWOT analysis of your organisation, thinking laterally by embracing all your internal departments rather than just focusing on the digital marketing department and gathering evidence and interviews on your colleagues, suppliers, customers thoughts.

Not only will it provide a better picture to lay out a strategy for your organisation as a whole but it also provides you with the opportunity to interview and build relationships across the organisation.

Dave Chaffey has examples of a marketing SWOT examples in his post where he recommends the TOWs matrix method to link the SWOT forward to strategies.

Stage 2. Objectives

Stage 2 of your digital marketing planning framework should focus on the Objective/s of your strategy. Stage 1 looked at the situation analysis which provided an overview for your organisation, specifically: who you are, what you do and how you interact and trade online by addressing internal and external factors impacting your business.

To help create your objectives, I recommend you use two guides to help to create both measurable and realistic goals to achieve for your digital marketing strategy, focusing on the 5 S’s and ensuring you make each objective SMART.

The 5 Ss goals refer to: Sell, Serve, Speak, Save and Sizzle which were created by PR Smith and the concept first published it in various online elearning packages and reference can also be found in the book, Emarketing Excellence . From defining your objectives relating to the 5 S’s to make it measurable, it is important to turn each objective into SMART objectives, which stands for:

• Specific – Are you focusing enough on a specific issue or challenge within the organisation?
• Measureable – How do you plan to assess the performance? Will it be monitored through quantitative or qualitative analysis for example?
• Actionable – Will it assist in improving performance if achieved?
• Relevant – Is the issue to be addressed within the domain of the digital marketing team?
• Time-related – Have you set a specific time period?.

There are a number of different SMART objectives that can be set for example, lead generation, acquisition or engagement or retention. For example, if we revisit the fictional online retailer, we can create the following objectives that have been created to follow the SMART formula:

• Objective 1. Engagement: Achieve 50% of existing customers to service their online account by July 2015.
• Objective 2. Acquisition: Increase brand visibility from April 2015 through to July 2015. To be measured through Google analytics.
• Objective 3. Engagement: Increase email frequency from one email per quarter to one email per week from May 2015 through to July 2015.

Stage 3. Strategy

Strategy means how do you plan to get there in terms of fulfilling the objectives set. The strategy section should also identify which segments of the market you aim to target with your plan.

We have already identified Company X will be focusing on its key strengths: product range, organisational structure and global operations (as detailed in the SWOT analysis) whilst remaining realistic to its lack of financial resources in comparison to the competition.

It is recommended Company X to develop a site geared for the World Cup which will provide a dedicated section used to service the customer base and to meet and service the objectives set for the strategy. The site will act as a key differentiator from the competition and a reason to visit and carry out a transaction. The strategy will be to outflank competitors in order to grab market share for world cup online traffic.

To summarise the Objectives set, specific questions have also been raised below to be considered within the strategy:

• 1. Acquisition

Increase brand visibility from April 2015 through to July 2015. To be measured through Google analytics. Increase the brand presence within identified online channels that target the football fan audience. What is the most cost-effective route to market? Are we reaching our key customer segments? Where can the brand name get increased exposure? Research our competitors and understand what online marketing tools they are using as well as not utilising and take a first mover advantage.

• 2. Engagement

Achieve 50% of existing customers to service their online account by July 2015. Understand our existing customer database and how they interact with the website.

• 3. Engagement

Increase email frequency from one email per quarter to one email per week from May 2015 through to July 2015. How is the company currently communicating with its existing customer database? Who of our competitors have implemented a communication with their customers?

Dave Chaffey recommends you use this type of table to summarise how you link or align strategy with objectives.

Stage 4. Tactics

Tactics cover the specific tools of the digital mix that you plan to use to realise the objectives of your digital marketing plan. The strategy section should also identify which segments of the market you aim to target with your plan.

We have already identified Company X will be focusing on its key strengths: product range, organisational structure and global operations (as detailed in the SWOT analysis) whilst remaining realistic to its lack of financial resources in comparison to the competition.

It is recommended Company X develop a micro site geared for the World Cup which will provide a dedicated section used to service the customer base and to meet and service the objectives set for the strategy. Competitor research was completed in stage 1, situation analysis, and a micro site will act as a key differentiator from the competition and provide the foundation to meeting the objectives of the strategy.

To summarise the Objectives set, specific questions have also been raised below to be considered within the strategy:

• Objective 1. Engagement: Achieve 50% of existing customers to service their online account by July 2015.
• Objective 2 Acquisition: Increase brand visibility from April 2015 through to July 2015. To be measured through Google analytics.
• Objective 3. Engagement: Increase email frequency from one email per quarter to one email per week from May 2015 through to July 2015.

Marketing mix to focus on your objectives

To help achieve the objectives above, use the 7PS of the Marketing Mix to focus on the key attributes to be considered by Company X in order to meet youe objectives. The marketing mix also provides a checklist of key areas to focus on:

Product – Company X enjoys global accreditation with the leading sports manufacturers. It therefore needs to ensure sufficient stock levels have been secured for each team playing at the World Cup finals.

Price – Review pricing of World Cup products and to ensure it is consistent to online competitors.

Place – Operating as an online retailer, this provides the main hub for all stock movements utilising courier companies to increase efficiency in delivering stock to the customer in the quickest time possible.

Promotion – Can utilise many of its online marketing tools available to utilise its effectiveness in promoting the product range to create a unique selling point (USP):

• Email marketing: Through past purchase history, set up targeted emails to send to existing customers based on team they support. Drive team specific promotions within each email e.g. Buy One Get One Free products, unique discounts on product lines. Also push refer a friend emails with incentive e.g. Send this email to five of your friends and if they register you get a 15% discount off your next order.
• Online voucher codes: Set up voucher codes that offer a 10% discount which are time specific to provide reporting (e.g. does the voucher include an expiry date).
• Social Media: Utilise the company accounts to engage with other football news accounts and provide information on latest World Cup products and promotions.

People – Utilise the customer service team to engage with customers should it be needed to provide support for customers who would like to answer questions on delivery of their order, tracking their order. Introduce Live Chat to allow existing and new customers to engage with staff.

Process – The customer would be directed to the website through a referral or recommendation. Locate the product of interest and add to shopping basket. Register your details online and add your credit card details to complete purchase. The customer will then receive an automated email response to confirm their registration along with an email to confirm order. A separate email will be sent to notify the customer when the order has been despatched.

Partnerships – List important strategic relationships with other companies that operate in non-competing sectors that have become an important selling point to differentiate itself from other online competitors.

Marketing tactics

When completing your own strategy, you would be going into a lot more detail for each tactic along with specific KPIs for each tactic

Tactic 1: SEO

From the competitor analysis, one of the key weaknesses of Company X over its competitors was a lack of financial muscle. However SEO does provide the company with a platform to compete head on, specifically, Search Engine Optimisation.

To understand what a positive impact SEO would offer in terms of increasing brand visibility for this target market, a keyword analysis should be performed, specifically on the Google UK marketsince ~90% of all searches in many markets are conducted through Google

Tactic 2: Pay-Per Click

As with SEO, the keyword research will provide a foundation on what keywords to target with a budget. Much of the competition do not operate a PPC campaign, therefore this is an area to capitalise on, by building traffic to the World Cup site as well as to increase brand visibility.

As with SEO, there will be an ongoing refinement of keywords to target as well as budget to allocate per keyword. Due to stock fluctuations, keyword budgets will need to be paused or activated based on stock volumes and demand for the product.

Tactic 3: Affiliate Marketing

A cost effective vehicle in driving brand visibility for Company X is the launch of a program. Building your affiliate marketing network is a central component to ensure you’re maximising opportunities in generating incremental revenue streams through a network of publishers that are active within your program either through lead generation, display, search or voucher codes.

Tactic 4: Email Marketing

An email strategy needs to be implemented in order to ensure our existing customer base is receiving regular newsletters. Tactics to be employed include a variation on what should be included within the content of the newsletters to ensure we retain a good click-through rate, open rate and conversion to sale. This tactic would be to utilise the existing customer database and incentivise them to recruit friends and colleagues to join the mailing list through weekly campaigns.

Stage 5. Action

Stage 5 of your digital marketing planning framework is focused on how to bring your plan to life, to make actionable measures.

The action section covers what needs to be achieved for each of the tactics listed in the previous section of the SOSTAC® plan to realise the objectives of your digital marketing plan.

Case Study to show tactics used

Continuing with the theme of the football World Cup, we have identified Company X will be focusing on its key strengths: product range, organisational structure and global operations (as detailed in the SWOT analysis) whilst remaining realistic to its lack of financial resources in comparison to the competition.

For the purpose of this case study, the following tactics were listed and below each tactic, actions have been included to ensure each has been considered before launch. This is not an exhaustive list but provides an outline to what should be considered:

• Tactic 1: SEO

Keyword analysis – What keywords are we targeting?

On page optimisation – Of the targeted keywords, we need to optimise the website pages of the micro site to ensure best rankings within Google.

Content - Identifying and reaching out to industry leading bloggers, forums and websites prepared to create guest content and build a relationship to propel your brands proposition around the World Cup.

Link building – Bring together a targeted group of websites to target with similar keywords and are seen as high authority sites.

• Tactic 2: Pay-Per Click

Keyword analysis – What keywords are we targeting?

Budget – What budget has been ring-fenced for PPC?

Landing pages – Do the keywords we are targeting direct customers to the correct webpage.

Product Availability – Are we communicating with our buyers to ensure we are bidding on keywords associated with products available to purchase?

• Tactic 3: Affiliate Networks

Affiliate Program – What is the competition doing? e.g. commission tiers, online marketing tools made available to publishers, volume of affiliates.

Business Development – Have we built up a working relationship with the affiliate program and will they assist in identifying and recruiting key affiliates to the program.

• Tactic 4: Email Marketing

Tracking/Software – Is the email software tool being used effectively? Are we tracking performance of email delivery and tracking email effectiveness such as click through rates, open rates, conversion to sale?

Stage 6. Control

The final stage is to layout how you plan to monitor and measure your performance based on the objectives set at stage 2. The tactics have been considered and your control section is providing you with a series of dashboards tailored for each tactic.

Look to set the KPI's per tactic that tie back into the objectives set and set up a weekly/monthly set of monitoring dashboards to ensure you are on track to meet the objectives set.

It's important to also communicate your concerns with the wider team to ensure there is buy-in to the company plan

For further information on PR Smith SOSTAC® planning guide, I recommend you purchase the book, The SOSTAC® Guide To Writing Your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan or Smart Insights Expert members can access it as part of their resources.

Download resources – SOSTAC@ Digital Marketing Planning Guide by PR Smith

A planning framework for creating and communicating plans .

Access the SOSTAC® Digital Marketing Planning Guide

Note from PR Smith: Simon Swan is not yet a registered SOSTAC®  trainer/consultant but has been granted permission to use SOSTAC® from the registered trademark owner, PR Smith. Further information regarding registered SOSTAC ® trainers & consultants is available from www.PRSmith.org/SOSTAC.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/sostac-plan-example/

Is Marketing a top source of leads for sales?

Chart of the Day: Marketing provide lower quality leads compared to those sourced directly by the sales reps

A Sales and Marketing SLA is important, but as we found out last week 21% of respondents characterize their company's Sales and marketings relationship as either misaligned or 'don't know'.

But how often do marketing teams provide their sales team with quality leads? Not as often as they find their own.

38% of respondents said that leads sources by sales are the top source of sales, 33% say referrals are the top source of sales and only 25% of respondents believe leads sourced by marketing are their top source of sales.

Sales respondents in organizations with an SLA between Marketing and Sales felt differently. Those respondents ranked marketing-sourced leads highest. Thanks to alignment, which sets clear expectations on the types of leads Marketing should provide and a feedback loop between departments, these sales respondents are nding much higher value in the leads Marketing generates for them. - Hubspot, State of Inboud 2017

Investment in your sales team is important in order to help enhance their ability to source top quality leads that convert - yet almost half (49%) of respondents said their company was going to spend less than $5,000 dollars for sales training and 43% of sales technology.

 

If you can't wait until my next Chart of the Day, you can view the full report online.

• Source : HubSpot
• Sample Size: 6,000+ worldwide inc CEOs, Directors and individual contributions from large and small businesses
• Recommended resource: Sales and Marketing integration guide 

 

source http://www.smartinsights.com/lead-generation/lead-generation-strategy/95585/

Why online businesses should use video to nourish leads

Use video to enhance your digital marketing strategy

Days of old fashioned mass ads “spray and pray” approach to advertising are long gone now and what the modern day advertisers need today is more precise targeting. Video is one approach you may not have considered.

Video advertising today is organized more along the lines of a precise laser, rather than of an advertising equivalent of “shotgun” marketing. If the leads are what you are after in your online business, with 61 percent of successful businesses stating that they use video as a marketing tool. The very same tool helps them carve out revenue for themselves, as the research done by Eyeview demonstrated that using video on a landing page alone can increase conversion rates by 80 percent. The future of advertising is here and it offers lucrative propositions for those who can recognize it for what it genuinely is.

Brain as an Additional Conversion Tool

But, let us first quickly go back to the nearest past - back in 2011, a research by Treepodia showed that the conversion rate for buyers who were offered to watch video was dramatically higher across different verticals. Those looking to shop for gifts online were more easily converted to leads by 113 percent, followed by 101 percent for electronic enthusiasts. Even less “traditional” online shoppers, such as those looking for garden products recorded 43 percent higher conversion rates in case they were offered a video on a landing page of their interest.

For the majority of them, the most attractive proposition was the existence of videos (particularly those of explanatory nature), which managed to “charm” 74 percent of users who decided to buy a product immediately after watching them. Before you accuse e-commerce site owners of employing nefarious hypnosis techniques, let us remember that this is primarily an expression of human innate inclination towards visuals as opposed to written material.

This is important not only for selling products constituting the core of your online business, as you equally want your consumers to spread the word about it. Luckily for you, psychology and the human brain’s visual hunger once again offers their help at no marketing agency fees – as many as 39 percent of shoppers are more willing to share the content if it’s a video, reports Psychology Today.

Light on Resources, Heavy on ROI

As if this was not good enough, video advertising more than graciously returns whatever you decide to invest into it. According to the research prepared by Wyzowl, 76 percent of businesses were ready to confirm that, in their experience, video provided great rate of investment. These data easily dispel the notions put forward by those who claim that the costs of video production outweighs its benefits. Video production technology has closely followed diverse trends of IT revolution in general, rendering its tools more readily available for anyone with at least elementary expertise in the field. In addition to it, it is constantly improving and made “lighter” on resources (and, consequently, your budget) by turning everyday tech such as mere phones into solid video production tools.

Nevertheless, even if you lack professional resources to plunge yourself in the business of making sophisticated videos, you have to bear in mind that your beginning can be as humble as possible, as long as you set your bar ever higher afterwards. Provided that you adequately detect what your targeted users exactly need, these statistical data will turn your videos into an equivalent of morning cups of coffee that may taste bad occasionally, yet rarely fail to deliver the goods each day.

Mobilizing Your Conversion

Video advertising profits massively from the expansion of mobile technology which makes it possible for people to watch videos “on the go”. Starting from 2013, mobile video segment has grown by about 233 percent, judging by the number of its viewers. According to trustworthy sources such as Google, mobile users are two times more likely to feel personally connected to video content they watch on their devices, compared to TV viewers or desktop users. Considering that this is the loyal audience that you want to keep in order to ensure their conversion into leads, you’ll be more than happy to learn that their number has been steadily increasing, as the mobile technology expands beyond even the wildest predictions.  At the same time, the majority of mobile and tablet users also make use of multiple devices they play their videos on, despite them being as many as three times more prone to watch videos in general compared to other consumers.

Finally, there is one more important consideration, and that is the love which Google and consequently YouTube give to your videos. According to the statistics, you have 53 times higher chance to rank better in Google searches if your website features a video [Editor's note: this is based on an old Forrester blog article which is misleading and can be disregarded]. You can go even further: with competent SEO optimization and adequate placement of links to your website or products, you online lead conversion rates are bound to skyrocket in an environment that is surely ripe for growth.

Conclusion

Global world of advertising has finally accepted online video as an indispensable component of its unstoppable commercial engine. Its trump cards are in line with a contemporary focus on the needs of a single customer and personalization of the seller’s relationship with him or her. With the advent of mobile technologies and the shift in the average consumer’s approach to the seller’s content, video becomes an effective tool for converting them into stable leads that can, almost too easily, become loyal customers.

Thanks to Ronen Menipaz for sharing advice and opinions in this post. Ronen is an IDF intelligence officer who has two degrees in TAU and is an active philanthropist in Young Entrepreneurs IL and NA Lagaat IL. He loves chicken but is passionate about machine learning and tech innovation. He has invested his life learning in creating innovative technologies in the Ad-tech & Fin-tech space. His love for creative and media agencies helped him produce more than 3 successful companies in those industries; Meme Global Media group, MemeMachine & MCM Inc. with more than 5 branches worldwide. He is managing more than 50M in investments for Fin-tech & Ad-tech companies and yes he really loves chicken. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-platforms/video-marketing/online-businesses-use-video-nourish-leads/

8 tips to get the most from you digital transformation budget

How to define an appropriate budget - one that’s realistic yet takes into consideration the aspirations of and opportunities available to your organisation

This a difficult balancing act, and never more so than for digital transformation projects. Here, we share some tips to deliver you a budget that effectively serves your transformation aims, helping you maximise the impact of your initiatives.

With so many different moving parts, digital transformation projects require a rock-solid foundation from which to build - including a budget that accurately reflects the scale and complexity of the initiative, while remaining achievable and realistic.

However defining such a budget - not to mention getting it signed off - can be challenging. We’ve all heard the horror stories of projects going over budget, stalling, or even being abandoned altogether.

If you’re currently in the early stages of your digital transformation journey and want to avoid a similar fate, this post shares practical tips to put you on the right path from the start, covering some of the key considerations you’ll need to address to ensure your budget truly supports your organisational requirements and strategic goals.

1. Involve everyone

Obviously, you can’t involve everyone from across your organization in your budgeting process, and nor would you want to. However, where digital transformation is concerned it’s important to consider alternatives to those traditional budgeting approaches that have typically been managed on a departmental basis, with the financial director approving a high-level budget that is then distributed across the team.

These models simply aren’t viable today, when digital stretches across different departments, roles, and locations to touch all parts of the enterprise. Instead, the ubiquitous nature of digital calls for a collaborative approach that facilitates an overarching understanding of core business processes, to ensure that every element of these is factored into your budget. Without this holistic picture, you run the risk of creating bottlenecks that will draw investment down and away from the revenue-generating activities that really matter.

2. Consider potential ‘hidden’ costs

Alongside the disparate requirements of the different business functions within your organization, there are almost certainly going to be additional areas that will need to be accommodated in your digital transformation budget. These can be easily overlooked, so be sure to undertake rigorous requirements gathering activities to uncover any supplementary demands.

For example, consider the following:

Infrastructure. How will your digital solutions be supported?

• Data. Do you have any vital information/content that needs to be migrated from your existing systems?
• Is investment required to meet relevant compliance and security standards?
• What skills and knowledge are needed to ensure your team can perform effectively?
• Change management. If your transformation is going to impact your processes, how will any necessary changes be rolled out?

… and not forgetting the costs associated with your requirements gathering activities themselves!

3. Create a shared vision

As mentioned in the introduction to this post, defining your budget is only part of the battle. You’ll also have to secure sign-off, meaning that those individuals in control of the purse strings need to be bought into your vision. It’s crucial therefore that you raise awareness of the need for - and benefits of - digital transformation at an early stage.

Even if you think this is already understood across your organization, it often isn’t the case. Indeed, as budgets are typically agreed in advance without any understanding of the complexity or dependencies involved it’s easy to assume a shared vision at the outset, only to find out further down the line that you don’t have the resources you need to move as quickly as you’d like, or achieve your desired results.

A dedicated ‘discovery’ phase can help you more clearly articulate your vision, and so communicate this to stakeholders - particularly if it includes the creation of low-fidelity deliverables such as prototypes and proofs of concept, which allow you demonstrate your ideas and objectives in a highly visual way, and provide increased confidence to help secure buy-in.

4. Demonstrate value

The key driver behind any digital transformation project should be to deliver value. If you focus solely on the features you want delivered without thinking about how they serve your overall vision, the project is unlikely to deliver the results you’re after. As you define your budget, then, think about the precise reasons why you want to undertake the work you’re planning.

This will not only help you justify your budget by providing specific examples of the benefits you aim to realise that you can reference - for example, streamlined processes, higher revenues, or a larger user base - but will provide a valuable baseline against which you can measure the success of your initiatives, and so inform any future programmes of work and their associated budgets.

5. Facilitate agility

If you’re undertaking a digital transformation project, you’re no doubt very aware of the rapid rate of change being driven by technological advances and changing user behaviours. But is your budget also flexible and fluid enough to allow you to capitalize on new trends and market conditions in a timely fashion?

While many organizations have embraced more agile ways of working in their operational processes, the commercial elements of a project typically still follow more traditional approaches and are as such often focused on fixed cost, defined requirements, annual cycles and allocated spend. It’s clear that a change in mindset is required to deliver the greatest possible value from your digital transformation initiatives - and the following tips explore in more detail some of the ways that this can be achieved.

6. Support change where required

While strict budget plans may offer high levels of predictability, they can seriously impact your ability to respond to change, and so leave you at risk of being overtaken in your digital transformation efforts by nimbler and leaner competitors. However, when introducing increased flexibility you’ll still need to provide the governance required by those allocating budget, who will be unlikely to want to relinquish control altogether.

One way to achieve a balance between these competing demands is to adopt a model that budgets for ‘epics’ (large, overarching projects) while moving responsibility of more granular decisions away from budget holders towards those with a closer working knowledge of individual initiatives.

The very structure of your budgets can also be adapted, to give you a closer steer to reality. As the rate of change in the digital landscape continues to outpace traditional annual budget cycles, some organizations are choosing to plan two six-month budgets instead - increasing the frequency with which they can assess project deliverables and monitor the market for potential opportunities. This allows the budget to be more quickly reinvested in productive areas, and be halted where value isn’t being realized, to minimise waste and accelerate the rate of returns.

7. Allow for innovation

Another way of supporting change while still keeping budgets under control is to invest in dedicated ‘innovation’ projects. Offering the opportunity to try out new ideas on specific parts of the wider transformation piece, these kind of initiatives allow you to prove the business case in a low-risk environment, and get a feel for the challenges and benefits associated with a project before committing significant resource.

You might also want to include a dedicated Research and Development (R&D) line in your budget, using this to explore various opportunities for innovation and disruption outside of the stricter frameworks and processes you may have in place elsewhere. By removing unnecessary overhead you can reap the rewards of increased velocity, and the first-mover status that often comes with this.

8. Keep it going!

Perhaps the most important thing to remember when budgeting for digital transformation is that it isn’t a single, distinct piece of work, but an on-going journey. While you likely won’t (and probably shouldn’t) try to capitalize on each new trend and technology that emerges, you will need to ensure your strategic roadmap aligns with the latest conditions and priorities, and have the necessary resources in place to execute this.

Adopting an iterative approach that encourages continuous improvement can prove extremely beneficial here. By focusing on regular deliveries and short feedback loops, this way of working will provide you with a model that’s ideally suited to the complex and evolutionary nature of digital transformation, which can then be adapted and extended beyond the initial launch to ensure you continue to deliver value at every stage of your journey.

In summary

Achieving your digital transformation aims is not a quick or easy process, but instead requires a coordinated, long-term strategy. However, by putting an appropriately scoped and managed budget in place you’ll help set yourself up for success at the outset and support a shift in mindset that will help ensure your investment is targeted where it will deliver the greatest benefits at each stage of your journey. Just remember to keep it up!

Thanks to Matt Brooks for sharing their advice and opinion in this post. Matt is Business Dvelopment Director at Box UK, responsible for working with clients to drive business results and effective change through the delivery of innovative solutions to their digital challenges. You can download their white paper on Five Stages of a Successful Agile Transformation. You can follow him/ her on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/managing-digital-transformation/8-tips-get-digital-transformation-budget/

10 ways of making social media analytics work for you

How to leverage the power of social media analytics to expand your audience

These days, if you are looking to expand your audience, you should definitely try your luck on social media, simply because everyone is there. However, the problem with being present on social media, and using it to reach out to your audience, is that it can eat up a lot of your time. For instance, if you have a killer post that will provide value to the readers, you will need to come up with a headline that will grab their attention, which is usually very divided, as well as find an image that will reel them in, maybe even include hashtags, and so on.

The following 10 methods will enable you to get more out your social media activity and grow your audience:

 1. Figure out Your Performance Benchmarks Will Be

In order to determine if your posts are doing well, you will need to check out the performance of your posts during the past several months, and determine the average performance. You will also need to do this for every social media platform, which is fairly simple with Facebook and Twitter, because you can download the data you need in spreadsheet form. Then, you will have to analyze some of the major indicators, such as reach, shares, or click-throughs, for instance.

As a marketer, you should be interested in the following KPIs:

• Engagement
• Reach
• Leads
• Conversions

Engagement can be viewed through shares, clicks, likes, visits, and so on. Reach, on the other hand, is expressed through the number of followers and impressions. But, your ultimate goal is to turn reach and engagement into leads and improved conversion.

 2. Try Using an Interactive Dashboard

Instead of rummaging through dozens of different spreadsheets from all these different social media platforms in order to crunch the numbers for your KPIs, you can use an interactive dashboard like Cyfe. The dashboard is capable of displaying all your social media data inside widgets and tabs which are easy to understand. You can customize the dashboard to include widgets containing Facebook likes, shares, and reach.

Next to it, you can have the number of retweets and Twitter followers in a separate widget. To get a better idea, check out the screenshot below:

 3. Determine Top Social Media Channels with Google Analytics

In addition to helping you monitor the traffic on your blog or website, Google Analytics can also capture data coming from social media. This means you can easily determine which social media is the most effective at driving more traffic your way. On top of that, it captures indicators like time on page and bounce rate, which helps you figure out just how much of that audience has a chance of converting.

It even enables you to track and analyze backlinks which, combined with UTM parameters which are also being tracked, can provide you with a complete picture of how those social media visits add to your income.

4. Establish Goals

In order for your social media strategy to make sense, it needs to rely on business outcome goals which are:

• Specific
• Relevant
• Realistic

and which can be measured with analytics software. For instance, goals which fit that description are traffic, conversions, or even the way your audience has grown over a particular time period.

5. Determine the Best Posting Times

Another factor that determines how each of your post will score with your audience is timing. For every social network, there are optimal posting times during the day, as well as optimal posting days during the week. However, while you should definitely take those into account, that doesn't necessarily mean you should stick to them religiously. Why? Because, if you decide to post on Facebook when its users are at its most active, you will encounter a lot of competition, and you will run the risk of your posts getting lost in all the noise.

6. Repost Your Evergreen Content Every Now and Again

You should always aim to produce content that will be relevant no matter what. While it's certainly important to keep up with the trends, a lot of such content has a pretty short shelf life. Your evergreen posts, on the other hand, will have value even months or years from now, which is why you shouldn't hesitate to share them with your readers again. Some followers may have missed it the first time around, while others have joined later, so give them a chance to check it out.

 7. Get in Touch with Influencers

Influencer marketing is all the rage these days, and it's being fueled by social media. If you have shared your content via social media for a while, the chances are that it has been shared by other people which have found it useful. If any of them have a large following, they are considered influencers, and getting in touch with them and striking up a collaboration can expose your content to an entirely new audience, drive more traffic your way, and improve your revenue.

 8. Monitor the Performance of Individual Posts

While is not very likely that you will have the time for an in-depth analysis for each and every one of your posts, you should take a look at how they are performing periodically. It will allow you to figure out what sort of content your audience likes the most, and which has received the biggest number of shares. With that information, you can tweak your content strategy to include more such content.

9. Implement Hashtags to Use Trends to Your Advantage

When creating your content, you would target certain keywords in order to find your target audience. With hashtags, however, that process is made a lot easier. While there may not be much use for them of Facebook, they are crucial on other social media platforms, such as Twitter and Instagram. Tools like Hashtagify Me can help you compile a list of the most relevant hashtags.

10. Update Your Audience Personas Regularly

The breadth of analytics data coming from social media can help you come up with really precise audience personas, and that includes their age, location, the devices they are using to read the content, as well as their habits and brands they are into. However, people can change their interests over time, which is why it's so important that your audience personas reflect those changes.

Conclusion

As you can see, social media can be used not just to engage your audience, or to drive more traffic to your website or blog, but also to collect important data which will improve your content strategy, as well as the performance of your posts.

Thanks to Brenda Savoie for sharing their advice and opinion in this post. Brenda is a Content Marketer, private English tutor, and desperate dreamer. You can follow her on Twitter or connect on Facebook.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-analytics/10-ways-making-social-media-analytics-work/

Fake news, new business accounts and new emojis

Social media essentials: 8 updates that happened in social media this week

To finish your working week off here are 8 social media updates we saw happen this week that could help inform your social media strategy. If you want to keep up to date with everything that's happening in digital marketing check out our top 10 sites we use to keep up to date. You can also vote for your favorite that keeps you up-to-date with what's happened in the world of social media.

Spotlight story: Amazon influencers program welcomes YouTube stars

Amazon is one of the many brands who has seen the benefits of using influencers to increase revenue. In March this year, Amazon’s Influencer Program was launched allowing social media influencers to earn commissions on Amazon products they promote. Last week Amazon also announced they will be accepting sign-ups from YouTube influencers. They have introduced a self-service tool for YouTube stars that lets them request to join the program. Find out more on what the program has to offer.

Facebook pages that share false news won’t be able to buy ads

Due to the amount of fake news that has been shared across social media, Facebook says it’s taking another step against Pages that share false news stories. They announced any pages that share any fake news will be banned from buying any Facebook ads, regardless of whether or not the ad includes a disputed link.

Facebook introduces new memories and milestones

Facebook has expanded their 'On This Day' feature, where users can look back in time as a sharing prompt. Users can now see a range of milestones related to their friendships on Facebook. They are now collecting past posts into monthly or seasonal sharing prompts, such as recaps of you July memories. You can also see who you become friends with each month, called 'Friendship Milestones'.

Whatsapp looks to introduce business verified accounts

WhatsApp is experimenting with giving businesses verified accounts. It has been reported that small accounts will now have a green tick badge next to them. Showing the viewer that WhatsApp has “confirmed” their phone number belongs to a business account. This will have been introduced due to the increase in brands using the platform as a form of marketing or customer service.

Instagram help you get creative with vertical video

Instagram has made creating creative stories easier than ever. They have introduced new ways for businesses and brands to take advantage of the various creative tools on Instagram Stories and create engaging, vertical content for their audiences. According to Instagram, these new tools include:

• Progress Bar - A time keeper to watch how people consume organic stories.
• Profile Photo will be featured in the top left-hand color for users to easily access your profile and learn more about your business.
• Emojify will give you the ability to add text and emojis to stories
• Pause feature mid video
• All brands and businesses can now access the swipe up feature

There are now 250M daily active users on Instagram Stories use these new tools in your stories to engage and interact with your Instagram audience.

WhatsApp Rolls Out Colourful Status Updates

Similar to Facebooks colour status updates WhatsApp has introduced different fonts, colourful background options, and links to text status updates. It has been reported that WhatsApp began testing the colourful status options with select users this month and will be rolling out the feature globally this week.

Facebook add real-world diversity to their emojis

Facebook has bee working on creating a wider range of families and skin tones to their emojis. 125 new emojis have been added to Facebook which allows black families to be represented in emoji form for the first time on the platform. The only emoji not covered is multi tone families, which I'm sure will come next. This update is now available worldwide for all users and works within the Facebook website and app.

LinkedIn help you welcome new team members

LinkedIn has introduced an easy way of introducing yourself to new team members. LinkedIn will notify you of any new employees, giving you the option to say hello and connect with them. An easy way to make some one new feel part of the team.

What do you think of Facebooks new fake news rule? Do you think it will have any impact? How will you make use of LInstagrams new vertical video features? Let us know what you think and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. Don't forget to join us next week for another weekly round up.

source http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/fake-news-new-business-accounts-and-new-emojis/